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[I am preparing
to enter an RCIA program, and e]veryday is a new test and I feel like
I am failing every one of them. I feel like the tests are here to show me
that I can’t do this. Even at Church today I felt helpless. The reading
[Luke 9:51-62] was talking about the disciples of Jesus and I didn’t
understand what was going on. What is He trying to tell me? The reading said
that people were trying to follow Him. One man asked to go bury his father
before joining Jesus. Jesus told him not to. Another wanted to say good-bye
to family and he also was told not to. I thought Jesus wanted us to take
care of each other. I just don’t understand. If we are asked to do
God’s work, that means to take care of each other, right? Obviously
NOT right. Why would Jesus not want us to bury our dead? Why would Jesus
want us to leave without saying good-bye?
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 find it very sad that many, if
not most, RCIA programs in this country are run by
dissenters from the true
Faith whose sole purpose is to mislead innocent souls
with lies and distortions of genuine Christianity. Then these poor souls
have to sit through homilies that fail to explain the psychological meaning
of texts like this. Of course, most priests have not studied psychology,
but then most priests also fail to deny themselves, in the mystical sense,
and so they fail to achieve the intuitive, mystical
understanding of human psychology that persons such as Saint John of
the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila attained. So we have multitudes of souls
hungry for the truth who are fed people-pleasing homilies filled with jokes
and banter; and we have multitudes of priests who, rather than courageously
preach the Gospel, preach intellectual niceties about the
Gospel.
Now, to understand the meaning
of this passage, you first have to put it in its historical
context.
The Historical
Context:
Leaving the Spiritually Dead World Behind
Jesus was leading His disciples
to Jerusalem—to His Passion and death on a cross, and, ultimately, to
His Resurrection and the establishment of the Church. Thus Jerusalem represents
not only Heaven but also the Way of the Cross
as the only way to enter Heaven. Jesus makes it clear, then, that
this journey to Jerusalem is not just some vacation pilgrimage. To follow
Him means to give up everything: to
“die” to the past and, with resolute
determination, to turn full attention to the journey ahead.
In this passage, Christ was speaking
to a man who—intellectually, at least—wanted to become a disciple,
but who in his heart wanted to secure for himself his family inheritance.
To go back and bury his father meant to arrange things so that when his father
died, he would be secure. Christ knew all of this, so He said what He said,
speaking directly to the lack of true faith in this man’s
heart.
Letting the “dead bury the
dead” means, therefore, to make a clear and total break with the spiritually
dead—that is, with the spiritually
“dead” world you’re leaving behind.
When you resolve to travel to “Jerusalem,” you can’t look
back. In that moment of conversion, the past means nothing, and the future
becomes everything.
Our Real Social
Obligations
Now, to us, in the world today,
this passage has an additional—a psychological—meaning. Christians
today must follow Jesus in spirit, not along a real dusty road to
a real city plodding along behind the actual historical Jesus. So, yes, to
follow Him in spirit we do have to die to the past, but we also have our
real lives in this world with real social obligations. When our parents die,
we really do have to bury them.
But there is more to life than
its literal social obligations.
The Desire for
Love and Recognition
“Letting the dead bury the
dead” means that to live a genuine Christian life we have to give up
our psychological desire to make the
world—the spiritually “dead”—give
us the love and recognition we believe we deserve.
Let me explain.
Let’s assume, for example,
that your father is an alcoholic, or that your
mother is a sort of professional
“victim,” always complaining of being
mistreated and treating everyone else with an acid tongue. Or maybe your
parents weren’t quite this bad, but maybe they misunderstood you in
other, more subtle, ways. In any event, you have been wounded deeply, and
you have suffered greatly because of the inconsiderate behavior of others.
You have felt unnoticed, unheard, and unloved. You have felt abandoned. You
have felt rejected. So what can you do?
Well, in the past, as a result
of all the hurt that was ever inflicted on you, just like your parents perhaps,
you felt
victimized. You complained about how poorly you were
treated. And, in those complaints, you wanted
unconsciously to show them—and the rest of the
world around you—how much you have been hurt. And, in wanting to show
them how much you have been hurt, you have wanted
compensation—and, in some ways, you have wanted
a compensation that is actually a form of
revenge.
OK. So that’s what you have
done according to the ways of the world. You have
done what everyone does in law, and politics, and sports: feel victimized
and demand satisfaction for your hurt. And if you can’t get that
satisfaction, you will become depressed and seek
out erotic pleasure or drugs or alcohol or food to try to satisfy
yourself. Or, you will try to tear down the Church through
heresy and
disobedience.
An End to
Victimization
What does Jesus do when his disciples
want to call down fire from heaven to avenge the insult they have received?
Jesus rebukes them. (See Luke 9:54-55.)
That is, as a Christian, you
have to respond to your hurt by “letting the
dead bury the dead.” In other words, you have to stop trying to make
the spiritually dead—your mother, your father, and anyone else who has
ever hurt you—“love” you or give
you the recognition you so desperately crave. Whenever you are injured, you
have to realize that you cannot call down fire from heaven to avenge yourself.
You cannot make the world treat you fairly. You cannot make
the world love you. You cannot make the world notice you. Instead,
you have to turn all your attention, with resolution and determination, to
the real destination of your life: Jerusalem. Jerusalem, where all victimization
must end, and where suffering and death on a
cross for the sake of others is the only path to true
love—and the Kingdom of Heaven.
So there you have it. In the
end, as you say, “I can’t do this”—but the full truth
is that you can’t do it alone, without the grace of following
Jesus to Jerusalem.
If you follow Jesus, you will
have life.
If you reject Him, you are dead.
Only the spiritually dead are concerned about their affairs in this world,
so if you turn from Christ to go back and arrange things so that you can
draw benefit from the world, you are dead. You are the dead trying to bury
the dead.
Therefore, if you
“complain” about how much you are being tested, you are dead.
You’re simply defending your pride, feeling
sorry for yourself and demanding that the world notice your pain. But being
a Christian involves recognizing your feelings of
hurt and then resolving to speak about them charitably
and calmly without demanding anything. If others
listen to you, fine. Work with them to find a solution to the problem, as
you have done by writing to me. And if they fail to hear you, well,
pray for their repentance and let the dead bury
the dead.
  
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