Sunday Meditation: To Hate Your Parents?

Let me only quote the part of today’s Gospel reading that gets everyone’s attention?

 

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus,

and he turned and addressed them,

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,

wife and children, brothers and sisters,

and even his own life,

he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me

cannot be my disciple.

        Lk 14:25-26

 

Now that is some passage.  Does Christ, who wants us to love all, actually mean that we are to hate the very people closest to us?  One can shrug this off as hyperbole, and it is on its surface, but there is actually something deeper when one understands the Hebrew culture Christ is coming from.

From Aleteia’s article on this passage:

 

In the Bible, the expression “to hate” means “to love less.” For example, in the Old Testament, Leah says the Lord has heard that she was loved less by her husband Jacob (Gen 29:33). The word used in the Hebrew original is precisely the word “hate” (senu’a).

 

The very same word is used by Jesus to indicate that those who want to follow Him must choose loving Jesus as their first and foremost love. Such love does not by any means exclude loving one’s family or oneself. However, the love of Christ is the greater love. 

 

So now let’s jump to the end of the Gospel passage, where Jesus continues:

 

 

“In the same way,

anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions

cannot be my disciple.”

Lk 14:33

 

So, now fully understanding the analogy above, meditate on Christ’s conclusion.