“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” On the surface, Jesus’ demands resemble those of a typical cult or sect, where severing ties with family and friends, surrendering one’s wealth and giving total control over one’s life to the leader are essential requirements. However, interpreting a single passage of scripture without considering its broader context within the Bible is not an uncommon mistake which, as history teaches us, can sometimes lead to disastrous consequences. So, let’s have a very brief review of certain aspects of Jesus’s speech. It started with an apparent demand to hate one’s loved ones, including their parents. It directly contradicts the fourth commandment: “Honour your father and mother,” along with a lot of additional texts across the Bible, particularly in the so-called wisdom books. Jesus himself praised family life both in his practical approach and in his teaching. Just recall his active presence at the wedding in Cana. Another time, when asked about divorce, he defined marriage as insoluble. He presented children as a model of trust: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Once, a man asked Jesus how to achieve life eternal and in response, he told him to keep the commandments. On further questioning, he listed a few, among them the fourth one: “Honour your father and mother”, and was pleased with the man when he declared keeping them all since his youth. These are just a few of the many biblical references we could use here.
After the outrageous opening line, Jesus’ speech rapidly toned down, shifting to a highly reasonable and agreeable need for cost calculation, a process familiar to most people planning any expensive project, such as refitting a kitchen. It suggests that Jesus’ initial line was a hyperbole, an exaggerated rhetorical device to grab his audience’s attention. The core message of his teaching was that one should either fully commit to his cause or not engage in it at all. In the Book of Revelation, this is expressed in a concise and striking manner: “You are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (3:15-16) Such a strong commitment doesn’t necessarily mean intentionally breaking ties with your family, but it can happen as an unintended consequence. Let me briefly illustrate this with two examples.
Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, the son of a prosperous silk merchant, led the lively life typical of a wealthy young man in the late 12th century. He was handsome, witty, gallant, and took great pleasure in fine clothes; he spent money lavishly. His father, who had renamed his son Francesco in honour of his French wife, tolerated his decadent excesses to a great extent until the young man turned his focus to a more religious life. It displeased his father so much that at one point, Francesco was dragged home by his father, beaten, bound, and locked in a small storeroom. Freed by his mother during his father’s absence, he found refuge in the church of San Damiano, but was soon brought before the city authorities by his father, who threatened to disinherit his son. Amid the legal proceedings before the local bishop, Francesco renounced his father and his patrimony and stripped himself naked, returning even his clothes as a sign of this renunciation. Although the ties between him and his father were severed, we can be sure that Francesco prayed for his father for the rest of his life. Known widely as St Francis of Assisi, he led a successful religious life and has inspired countless people over the centuries that followed.
Edith Stein was born in 1891 into an observant Jewish family in the German city of Breslau. She was the youngest of eleven siblings and was born on Yom Kippur, an important Jewish festival; these two aspects combined made her her mother’s favourite child. By her teenage years, she became agnostic, a fact that upset her deeply religious mother. Highly intelligent and talented, she was awarded a doctorate in philosophy at the age of 25 in 1916, a significant achievement for a woman in the 1910s. In fact, three years later, her habilitation was rejected because she was a woman. Fascinated by reading St Theresa of Ávila, she converted to the Catholic faith in 1922, a decision that again deeply upset her Jewish mother. Edith Stein became a Carmelite nun in 1933, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. In early August 1942, she, her sister Rosa (also a convert), and 243 baptised Jews were arrested, transported to Auschwitz, and murdered in gas chambers on 9 August. She is one of the six patron saints of Europe. Here is an interesting fact: whether as an agnostic young woman or a Catholic in her adult years, whenever she was in her home city of Breslau, she always accompanied her mother to the synagogue.
Our Catholic faith and our religious practices are not only meant to serve us as a means of spiritual well-being and personal assurance of eternal life. We must inspire others and help them find Jesus as their Saviour. This can only be achieved when we commit ourselves to genuinely living out our faith. “I wish that you were either cold or hot.”
