13A23     2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a.   In his travels Elisha, appointed by God to be a prophet, was chosen by a woman of influence to have him as a guest in her home to receive gratuitous room and board because he was “a holy man of God.”  In effect by being generous to Elisha because he was a prophet of the Lord, she was being generous and gracious to God.  Elisha, knowing the mind of God, rewarded the childless woman with the promise of her having a baby son a year later.  This Sunday’s gospel says, “Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.” Whenever we do good out of our desire to be gracious to the Lord who is so gracious to us, the Lord recognizes our graciousness and in turn is abundantly gracious to us.

Matthew 10:37-42.  “Jesus said to his apostles: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”  It is humanly natural to love our family members.  However, Jesus demands that the fount or well spring of our love is divinely based.  If our love springs out of the love God has for us, that resource, since it is divine and almighty, will give us the capacity to love with a love that will be far greater than the love we can have just loving out of our human capacity  to love.  Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine, you are the branches.  Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”  In today’s gospel Jesus said: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”  The cross Jesus is calling on us to bear is to die to trying to live our lives out of own personal capacity to live without Jesus but rather to rise to a new life of living our lives in Christ.  Whoever tries to get along without God is doomed.

Romans 6:3-4, 8-11.  “Brothers and sisters: Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”