As we celebrate the Sunday of All Saints today, we hear Jesus Christ both challenging His disciples and assuring them of the reward that awaits those who have left all to follow Him, and who have remained faithful to Him despite hardship and persecution. He tells us that those who “love father or mother more than me are not worthy of me” and that those who have left “houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.”
These are challenging words. We can certainly see them acted out dramatically in the lives of many of the saints, who literally left their families, and sometimes even their countries, for the sake of the Gospel. But we may wonder how they apply to us. Are we not also called to holiness?
It seems that the answer lies with what is in our hearts. Christ does not say that we should not love our families, nor are all called to leave their families and their lands. But He does say that if we love these things more than Him, then we are not worthy of Him.
What Jesus Christ is calling us to is the right ordering of that which we love. If He is at the centre of our lives, then we will be able to love all that He gives us, but in a way that gives glory to God. And, if we nurture our relationship with Him, then He will give us the wisdom to choose wisely so that our everyday lives may also become a path to holiness. For holiness is to be found not only in doing dramatic things for God, but in doing everyday ordinary things with a pure heart.