Please read this passage before reading the homily.
My sisters and brothers,
Jesus lived with his parents obediently until he was about thirty years old. Eventually he left home and began to preach. His calling by God was that he should leave home and move about the country homeless announcing the word of God.
Jesus would say that “whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. . . . Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” There comes a time in life when the son or daughter has to move out of the ancestral home to begin a more adult form of life. If se refuse to more when that time comes, then we may be loving family more loving God.
To love Jesus more than parents and family does not mean walking or running away from them and the responsibilities we have with them. It means moving as the Spirit of God directs us while we keep open the relationship we hold dear.
I am retired. This means that I no longer have to manage a huge budget and a big payroll. It does not mean that I am supposed to sit around doing nothing all week. People who retire and do nothing die with nine months of retiring. I have kept busy, celebrating Mass at times in Spanish, at times at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, at times in other parishes, such as this one. If we hold onto our lives, we lose them; if we spend our lives, we gain them.
Much of my mail is requests for help. Many want money help from me. I cannot help all of them. How Many of them are for prophetic projects, or righteous causes, or to help disciples, it is hard to tell.
Our everyday lives touch deeply on the questions raised by this passage from St Matthew’s gospel.