Reflection

Parenthood is a life changing experience. We discover, much to our surprise, we can love more intensely than we thought we could. It would be safe to say that most parents want the best for their children. As parents, think of the times you’ve watched your children while they were sleeping, playing or eating, and you just felt so much love for them in your heart, a love only parents can understand. Or as a son or a daughter, think of those moments that you realized how much you love your parents in spite of their shortcomings and mistakes because you realized they were trying their best. Such is the power and intensity of a loving relationship between parents and children.

The prophet Elisha in the first reading knew the intensity and joy of a parent-child relationship. To the woman who offered him hospitality, Elisha promised that she would have a child. But why is it in today’s gospel, Jesus says that if you love your children or parents more intensely than me, you’re not worthy of me. Is he saying that loving one’s parents or children is incompatible with loving God? What did Jesus mean when he said that we are not worthy of his love if we love our parents or our children more than him?

We know that God is love itself; he is goodness itself; he is beauty itself. St. Thomas Aquinas calls God as the Summum Bonum, the greatest or highest good. If there is anything God cannot be is second fiddle. He cannot be incidental to anyone or anything else. God desires the first place in our life and is only right we give God the most honored place in our heart. Once we set aside God in place of someone or something else, He is not loved above all things anymore. When we place something else above and before God, we neglect the first commandment; I am the Lord your God. You shall not have any strange God before me.

But how can we love those dearest to us without turning it to idolatry and placing God as second fiddle? St. Augustine once said I love other people and other things more fully when I love them for the sake of God. Does this mean that we abandon human love? No. It just means that we place all those we love within the context of the greatest and highest love possible, love for the sake of God. If we don’t, human love becomes manipulative and misdirected. We love for our own purpose, a love that is both selfish and exploitative. In reality, it is not love at all. But when we love those closest to us for the sake of God, our love becomes part of God’s purpose for them. We can also say the same thing about our work and social life. They are good things. But when we love them for their own sake, it becomes self-absorbed and deceitful. If we love those things for God’s sake, and see them as part of our mission from God, we truly love God above all things and still love those dearest and most important to us.

Response

Our hierarchy of values must always be: God first, family and people second, things last.