31 July 2006

ad majorem Dei gloriam

St. Ignatius of Loyola: I Cor 10.31-11.1 and Luke 14.25-33
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

HEAR IT!
You can only witness faithfully to what is first in your life. So, you had better think before you sign on to be a student of the Master of Charity. You had better consider carefully the price of his education.

In the last few weeks, Jesus graduated his friends from disciples to apostles, making missionaries out of students. In the commencement address on graduation day Jesus exhorts them to go out into the world relying solely on the abundant goodwill of those to whom they will witness, taking no second cloak, no sandals, no money. He warns them carefully that their witness will not be always be heard as faithful testimony. Sometimes it will be heard as blasphemy, sometimes as sedition, and sometimes as an inconvenient truth. Regardless of how their witness is heard, Jesus tells them that they are to give glory to God first and only and speak as ones who have seen and heard. And this simple act of fidelity is guaranteed to get them all killed. And it does.

If you will apply for this program in the School of Wisdom and Love, Professor Jesus has some words of advice for you at the beginning of this school year: if you will not put aside your parents, your siblings, your children, even your own life, you cannot be admitted. This program of conversion and witness requires dedicated focus, undivided loyalty. If you will not carry your own cross and walk gladly to your own execution, then you do not meet the perquisites for admission. If you will not calculate the cost of your discipleship, you are not ready for these final exams. You pay tuition in blood, sweat, and tears. There is no financial aid.

Now, all that seems just a little dramatic for us sitting here in Irving, TX in 2006. No one is ever going to ask any of us here to put aside a husband or wife, or abandon our children, or to take up a cross and hang for our witness. Our situation is more subtle, and therefore, far, far more dangerous.

Here’s the point for us in our postmodern comforts: if you will do this Christian thing, if you will move from being a student to being a missionary and move with any sort of integrity, any sort of fidelity to Christ, you will do so for one reason only: ad majorem dei gloriam, for the greater glory of God…and for that reason alone. You will not do this for the love of husband or wife or children or mother or father. You will not do this to avoid trials, to avoid persecutions. To put anything before the glory of God, to put anything before your witness to the truth of the faith—a science, a philosophy, an ideology, a family—is to ruin everything you are, everything you are as his disciple.

You can only be a faithful witness to what is first in your life. If that is Christ, the Glory of the Father, then everything else—family, friends, career, your cross, everything else makes perfect sense in your discipleship. Our families do not save us. Our friends do not save us. Our careers do not save us. Our degrees do not save us. Our ideological commitments do not save us. Our charitable works do not save us. We are saved in the single historical act of self-sacrifice of Christ on the cross. We are saved in this witness of love and we are saved for the greater glory of God.

Be imitators of Christ: you can only witness faithfully to what is first in your life.

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