While we readily proclaim in homily and prayer that our God is love, in the concrete practicalities of worldly affairs we are both unwilling and fearful to trust the lovely and tender quality of love itself. The proper way to run a world, we cannot help by think, is to have love supported by power.

Action or contemplation: must we choose?

Being and doing are not antithetical, but the integration of our expressive and instrumental motivations and that of our spiritual natures requires something which writers as Richard Rohr, OFM, Thomas Merton, OCSO, and Parker Palmer call contemplation, and others call mindfulness.

Discipleship is a radical call

Gospel: Luke 9:51–62
No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God

St. Francis of Assisi is a wonderful example of a radical response to Jesus’ command: “Follow me”. He left a life of riches and ease and embraced radical poverty and love of all creation. He is the saint of humility, simplicity, serving our neighbors, and joy.

He has warned the disciples of his impending suffering there (9:21–27, 44–45), but even though they confess their faith in him as Messiah (9:18–20) and see him transfigured with Moses and Elijah (9:28–36), they cannot begin to imagine the horror of Jesus’ last days. But Jesus knows. He has “set his face” toward Jerusalem, meaning unwavering determination.

Today’s gospel won’t let us turn away from the people and situations that are right in front of us or the future that is coming to us. Jesus recognizes and holds before us the tension in which we live. On the one hand we say to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” On the other hand we say to him, “But first let me go and …”