Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
June 26, 2016 5:00 pm · Father Dan Vanyo
In the first Reading Elijah comes up, Elisha is working in the field and he throws his mantel over him and walks away. But Elisha knew what that meant. Everyone knew who Elijah was, and when a prophet put a mantel on you, he knew what that meant. He says, "let me go home and kiss my mother and father goodbye, and Elijah is like, "get back", what? In the Gospel we have two more such occasions. Jesus says follow me to one, and he says, "I will, let me go bury my father." Jesus says very cryptically, "Let the dead bury their dead". And the last one, "let me go say goodbye to my family" and Jesus responds, "No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks tow what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God."
All three cases have this kind of negative response to what that seems like something very good. Let me go home and kiss my mother and father goodbye, don't we let our Seminarians say goodbye to their family before they go to Seminary? I mean, reasonable requests. Bury my father, that's a corporal work of mercy. All of those a reasonable requests, so why the seemingly negative reactions? First of all Elisha got was was going on with Elijah because after Elisha's hesitation, he gets it. And he burns his plowing equipment, that's what he had as his possessions, he sacrifices his oxen to the Lord. He gives what he has to the Lord, give the people the meat to eat and takes off. We don't know what happened to the other two disciples. But Jesus read their hearts perfectly and knew what was going on. He knew there was a but in there. Yes I'll follow you but... hesitation, delay, procrastination. I'll do this, but first let me do this, and then I'll follow you.