Forward Ever, Backward Never! ~ by Ronnie Archer

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time







In today's readings, we hear of Elijah being told by the Lord to anoint Elisha... but Elisha first wanted to say his good-byes to his family. Elisha's act of slaughtering his oxen, boiling them and giving it to the people to eat, was a sort of "good-bye" and an act of breaking ties, so as to follow Elijah.

The second reading from St. Paul to the Galatians, speaks about our freedom in Jesus to live and to be guided by the Spirit to love and serve one another. We were not set free to fall back into our old ways of living by the flesh - anything that keeps us from a life of following Jesus' way - but we are free to live in the Spirit of Christ.

In Luke's Gospel, Jesus was rejected in the Samaritan village because of His determination to journey to Jerusalem. The disciples, James and John, were angry that Jesus was rejected, so they wanted to destroy the town. They wanted "revenge", asking the Lord if He wanted them to call down fire from heaven to consume them. Jesus rebuked them. He did not allow that incident to deter Him from carrying out His plan to go to Jerusalem. Jesus knows that we cannot force anyone to accept us. If we are rejected, we cannot keep looking back and dwelling on the past. Rejection should not make us think that we are less worthy than others.

Sometimes a disappointment will bring us to a Divine appointment; we have to "pull ourselves together and take control of our destiny." We only should want to look back to see how far we have progressed - and to cherish the journey we have made.

Later, another told Jesus that he "would follow Him wherever He went." Jesus told him that "the Son of Man has nowhere to rest His head"... meaning that the person did not really know what he would be asking to "get himself into." Then another who Jesus told to "follow Me," replied: "let me go say farewell to my family at home." Jesus said to him that "No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God."

Jesus does not mean for us to abandon family, but Jesus doesn't want us to use excuses or to put people or things before worshipping and following Him.

If we want to follow Jesus, then we have to break ties with whatever it is in our past that would keep us from really following Jesus. IF we look back, we should look back without regrets, remembering the lessons of life that we have learned.

We should set goals for ourselves - thinking of something that will continuously motivate us to keep pressing forward. There might be others who will take pleasure in remembering something that happened in our past; but we cannot focus our attention on that. We have to keep going forward. No one can take away from us what is ours by Divine right.