[00:00:05] Hello, my name is Sally Moriarty-Flask. Welcome to: From His Word to Our Hearts, my weekly Bible study podcast.
Together we will explore the readings to be proclaimed at the Catholic Mass on Sunday, September 7, 2025, the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.
This week's episode is entitled: Counting the Cost, and in these readings, Jesus challenges us to love him more than anyone or anything else in our lives.
[00:00:37] As we journey through the readings this week, consider the following:
Loving Jesus is part of being his disciple, but there are other things we must do as well. We must follow him without reservation, we must renounce earthly possessions, we must carry our crosses, we must pursue heavenly wisdom… and we must do all of that willingly. That's a tall order, but he promises to send us help. How can we turn that down?
[00:01:13] So, let's begin.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Heavenly Father, we praise you and we thank you for the gifts of your Son and of the Holy Spirit. Grant that we, your faithful sons and daughters, may benefit from such great gifts to merit a place in your eternal kingdom. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Now that we've opened our hearts in prayer, let's listen to what God is telling us in the Scriptures.
[00:01:44] Our Gospel this week is from Luke 14: 25-33.
[00:01:50] “[G]reat multitudes accompanied [Jesus]; and he turned and said to them, ‘If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build, and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace. So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.’”
For the last couple of weeks, I keep saying that we are drawing closer to the end of the Liturgical Year which means that our journey through Luke will also be coming to an end – Luke’s Gospel, of course, won't reach its conclusion with the end of the Liturgical Year - but what we hear of his Gospel in Ordinary Time will end.
[00:03:25] And, while I may sound like a broken record by now, Jesus is still teaching about judgment and the kingdom of heaven. The closer Jesus gets to Jerusalem, the more pointed his parables become.
[00:03:41] Now we know that all parables teach something about the kingdom of heaven, but the parables we're hearing now are also focused on preparation and judgment – on being prepared to receive the blessings of the kingdom and the judgment to which we will be subject before we can enter into the kingdom.
So, let's hear what Jesus has to say this week…
“[G]reat multitudes accompanied [Jesus]; and he turned and said to them, ‘If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’”
[00:04:27] That sounds so disturbing and disheartening to our modern ears, but – as is almost always the case – that's because we don't properly understand what Jesus is saying.
[00:04:45] When Jesus uses the word hate in this passage, he is employing a Jewish idiom. In this context, the word hate does not mean dislike, disdain, or loathe; it means to love that thing less.
[00:05:04] Not detest one's own father… but love one's father less; not despise one's own life… but love that life less.
[00:05:17] The question, however, is less than what? Well, the answer is Jesus. We have to love everything less than we love Jesus.
[00:05:30] “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”
[00:05:37] The crosses we will bear in our lives will never compare to the Cross Jesus carried, but we are, nevertheless, told we must shoulder whatever cross is ours to bear.
[00:05:50] And yes, Jesus carried his own actual wooden Cross, but… throughout his life, he carried many crosses himself; he accepted the weight of every single one of his responsibilities: care for the Twelve, care for the crowds that followed him, the weight of a nation's expectations of a Messiah, the burden of knowing his own destiny, and the full weight of what he was to suffer.
[00:06:29] So often, we think only of Jesus carrying the wood of his Cross on the day he was crucified and bearing the burden of his Passion and Death… and we forget the other burdens he carried throughout his entire human life.
[00:06:46] And we are told that not only must we carry our crosses, but that we must also follow Jesus – we must hear and obey what he teaches, and we must follow the example he sets for us.
[00:07:04] If we don't do ALL of those things, then we are not worthy of Jesus, we are not acting as his true disciples. And Jesus doesn't just say that here, he says it over and over again in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.
The overall message is simply that Jesus must come first… first in importance, first in our love, first in our obedience, first in the example we follow, first in our life.
[00:07:49] Jesus must come first, because if he does, everything else will fall into its proper place.
[00:08:02] Jesus then tells two parables, and these are found only in Luke.
[00:08:09] “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build, and was not able to finish.’”
[00:08:31] Jesus is reminding his listeners - and us - that the entire cost of discipleship must be considered before committing fully to that path, because it's a one-way street… once we allow Jesus into our hearts, there's no going back.
[00:08:55] And if we fail, we may face something much worse than mockery, we may be shut out of the kingdom and face eternal exile from Jesus’ presence.
[00:09:10] Thankfully, we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation to provide us strength and grace when we do stumble and fall along the way.
[00:09:22] “Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace.”
[00:09:47] Both of these parables teach about the importance of calculating the cost of discipleship and being able to carry through our commitment to it. In other words, if our goal is ultimately the kingdom of heaven, and the way we reach our goal is through discipleship, then we have to be prepared for whatever costs discipleship entails.
[00:10:23] “So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”
[00:10:32] That sort of radical commitment sounds extreme to us - and it is! It's supposed to be! Following Jesus, being a faithful disciple, is not a decision to be made lightly.
[00:10:51] We must understand all the demands such a decision will place upon us and accept all the repercussions that will result. And being a faithful disciple means we have to be faithful to everything Jesus teaches, to every example he sets for us, and to the love he showed for us on the Cross when he laid down his life… for us.
[00:11:29] That's not an easy path to walk and we can't pick and choose which teachings we like and only follow those… we can't follow only the examples we agree with…. we can't love just some people - we must love everyone… no matter how difficult that may be.
[00:12:03] But Jesus promised us help along the way. Jesus sent his Holy Spirit to guide us, to strengthen us, to help us. So, how can we turn that down?
[00:12:27] That takes us to our First Reading, which is from Wisdom 9: 13-18b.
[00:12:36] “What man can learn the counsel of God? Or who can discern what the Lord wills? For the reasoning of mortals is worthless, and our designs are likely to fail, for a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind. We can hardly guess at what is on earth, and what is at hand we find with labor; but who has traced out what is in the heavens? Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy Spirit from on high? And thus the paths of those on earth were set right, and men were taught what pleases you, and were saved by wisdom.”
[00:13:36] We encountered the Book of Wisdom recently and, if you remember, I said it is sometimes called the Wisdom of Solomon - and it is specifically attributed to Solomon as if he was writing as an old man, although the book was actually written long after Solomon's death.
[00:13:55] This is another book that is considered part of the canon of Scripture for Catholics and Orthodox Christians, but not in the canon of the Hebrew or Protestant Bibles. The author of Wisdom never actually names himself, but his writing suggests that he is a well-educated Jew, probably living in Alexandria, who is familiar with Greek philosophy and well versed in Jewish history.
[00:14:29] This book was likely the last of the Old Testament books to be written, possibly around as late as 40 AD although some scholars date it as early as 100 BC.
[00:14:42] This passage is from a section of the book entitled the Prayer of Solomon, which is based on King Solomon's actual prayer to God for the gift of wisdom, which we find in the parallel passages of 1 Kings 3 and 2 Chronicles 1.
[00:15:01] So let's listen to this passage…
[00:15:05] “What man can learn the counsel of God?”
[00:15:10] That question bemoans human ignorance of divine will, and the answer is simple – no human person is capable of understanding God.
“Or who can discern what [God] wills?”
[00:15:26] That really leads us to the heart of the first question as well. God's will is inaccessible to humanity apart from divine revelation, we can only know that part of God's will that he chooses to reveal to us.
[00:15:47] So, while no human person - on their own - can understand God, we are able to understand that which he chooses to reveal about himself to us.
[00:16:04] “For the reasoning of mortals is worthless, and our designs are likely to fail,”
Meaning that humanity is limited - our knowledge, our reasoning, our intelligence, and our abilities are simply limited by our earthly existence.
[00:16:26] “for a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind.”
[00:16:38] I said earlier that the author was familiar with Greek philosophy, and this certainly indicates that. In the Phaedo, Plato wrote that the body weighs down the soul and the intellect. So, we hear the echo of that in this passage here in Wisdom.
“We can hardly guess at what is on earth, and what is at hand we find with labor;”
Meaning that the majority of the earth was unknown and unexplored at the time, and that even what was nearby may have been difficult to reach or even inaccessible because travel was grueling and dangerous. So again, the author is simply saying, even those things that are knowable to us can be difficult to explore or understand.
[00:17:42] “but who has traced out what is in the heavens?”
[00:17:46] The answer is really no one. While Assyrian, Babylonian, and Greek astronomers had observed and cataloged celestial objects and even developed models to explain their movements, there was no advanced understanding of astronomy at the time, certainly not as we have today.
[00:18:11] The first telescope wasn't even invented until the 17th century, and most Greek natural philosophers - whose influence on the author of Wisdom we can easily detect - were more concerned with understanding THE REASONS for the movement of celestial bodies than attempting to explain their movements in systematic way.
[00:18:39] Again, the answer to the author's question is no one! No one has traced out the heavens. That was a very long explanation to reach a short answer.
[00:18:53] “Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy Spirit from on high?”
[00:19:04] What the author of Wisdom is saying is that mankind is incapable of understanding God through its own limited human efforts.
[00:19:18] That the only way to receive divine wisdom was through divine revelation and the gift of God's Spirit, for God's Holy Spirit - which proceeds from the Father and the Son - is uniquely qualified to know the mind of God.
[00:19:37] “And thus the paths of those on earth were set right, and men were taught what pleases you, and were saved by wisdom.”
Meaning that through the revelation of divine wisdom, mankind is able to finally know and do God's will. And remember also, this entire passage was based on Solomon's prayer.
[00:20:07] Solomon could have asked God for anything, but he asked only for wisdom and by doing so he was given everything else as well.
[00:20:20] This passage teaches us that in order for humankind to know the divine will and act in accordance with it, God must first send us his wisdom… God must reveal his wisdom to mankind… he must speak to mankind. And that is at the very heart of the Gospel!
[00:20:52] It is Jesus who speaks to us in the Gospels… Jesus has been sharing divine wisdom with everyone as he has been traveling this last time to the city of Jerusalem.
[00:21:15] He has been speaking to his disciples, to the crowds that have been following him, to the Pharisees, to the Sadducees, to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious authorities - everyone who has heard him speak has heard divine wisdom.
[00:21:45] And hearing divine wisdom teaches us to know God's divine will, which should, in turn, make us faithful disciples.
[00:21:56] But again, everyone heard that message… not everyone accepted it. That is the risk that is always there.
[00:22:12] Jesus’ message can always be rejected, we can always turn our back on it.
[00:22:20] And being faithful disciples also means we must be faithful to the entirety of Jesus’ message - not just what we like, not just what is comfortable, not just what fits into our plans, but everything.
If we turn our back on part of Jesus’ message, we run the risk of turning our back on all of it.
[00:22:51] That's why we must count the entire cost of discipleship and make absolutely sure we are willing to pay that cost in full. But Jesus did send his Holy Spirit to help us, as long as we don't reject that help.
[00:23:19] That brings us to our Responsorial Psalm, which is Psalm 90, and the refrain is:
“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.”
[00:23:30] And here are the verses:
“You turn man back to the dust, and say, ‘Turn back, O children of men!’ For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.”
“You sweep men away; they are like a dream, like grass which is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.”
“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants!”
“Satisfy us in the morning with your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us, yes, establish the work of our hands.”
[00:24:35] This Psalm is a Communal Lament, attributed directly to Moses. We heard this same Psalm just last month, but with a different refrain at the time.
[00:24:48] The Psalmist, as I said - who we know to be Moses, cries to God that man's life is brief and burdened by trouble, but that God is eternal and merciful.
[00:25:01] Man is subject to bodily death and the vagaries of time, whereas God is subject to neither. Moses’ hope is that God will be merciful to the people during their brief lives on earth, and he acknowledges that it is a great wisdom to know that life's pains and frustrations are only temporary. As all laments do, this Lament Psalm ends with a message of hope… that God's boundless mercy is renewed with the dawn of each new day and that is a great blessing AND that since mankind only has a limited time on earth to serve God, our greatest hope is to serve him well.
[00:25:52] The end of the Psalm is full of hope and trust in God, which is why this Psalm was paired with our reading from Wisdom and our Gospel. And we have to hear, in that expression of hope and trust, the assurance that God will help us if we turn to him… he will always help us.
[00:26:17] That takes us to our Second Reading, which is from Philemon 9b-10, 12-17.
“I, Paul, an ambassador and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus— I appeal to you for my child Ones’imus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment. I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will. Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.”
[00:27:49] Philemon is the shortest letter in the New Testament; it contains only 25 verses, so the citation for this book rarely contains a chapter number, only verse numbers.
[00:28:03] It is one of Paul's Captivity Letters, written around 60-62 AD when he was under house arrest in Rome. Paul is universally accepted by scripture scholars as the author of Philemon, and the greeting of the letter indicates that it was sent from both Paul and Timothy.
[00:28:27] The title of this book comes from the name of the person to whom the letter is addressed, a man named Philemon who was a wealthy Christian in the city of Colossae (which is in modern day Turkey).
[00:28:42] And Philemon would have opened his home to other Christians as a place to gather for worship - they were called house churches - and that's how early Christians gathered together.
[00:28:56] From the context of the letter we know that Philemon was a slave owner and, in fact, the owner of the very slave whose fate is the subject of this letter. That slave, of course, is Onesimus who ran away from Philemon and ended up with Paul, who in turn baptized him.
[00:29:19] So with all of that background, let's listen to what Paul has to say…
[00:29:26] “I, Paul, an ambassador and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus”
[00:29:32] The word ambassador is translated from the Greek word presbytēs, which means elder or old man. In fact, the NAB translation says “old man” rather than “ambassador.”
[00:29:47] And while most of the time I truly feel that the RSV is a more accurate translation than the NAB, more faithful to the original Greek or Hebrew… I have always been at a loss to explain this apparent error. Scripture scholars have, in fact, developed two main theories about this translation anomaly.
One is that it was a simple transcription error where the Greek word presbytēs was miscopied as presbeuo. Now, presbeuo is the Greek word for ambassador. Unfortunately, that Greek word doesn't appear in any surviving copy of Philemon, so that may or may not be the case.
[00:30:37] The other theory is that this phrase was translated more as a conjecture than as a literal translation… meaning that when the RSV was translated, someone decided that “ambassador” was more appropriate in that phrase than “old man.”
[00:30:56] And Paul does refer to Christians as “ambassadors for Christ” in 2 Corinthians so that phrase wasn't uncommon to Paul. At the same time, Paul was in his late 50s when the letter was written, so certainly an older man as lifespans were measured in biblical times.
[00:31:20] In the Catholic Lectionary, which is based on the NAB translation, the Greek is translated as “old man” so that is what we, as Catholics, will hear at Mass this weekend.
[00:31:30] So I'm going to read it that way now…
[00:31:33] “I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus”
[00:31:40] Again, this was one of Paul's Captivity Letters and he is referring to being under house arrest in Rome when he says he is a prisoner for Christ.
[00:31:53] “I appeal to you for my child, Ones’imus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment.”
[00:32:01] The name Onesimus means useful one, and we'll see very soon why Paul feels that is a particularly appropriate name. But in this sentence, by using the terms child and father, Paul is informing Philemon that Paul Baptized Onesimus… that Paul is now the father in the Christian faith of Onesimus, and that Onesimus is a child in the Christian faith of Paul… as is Philemon - who was also very likely Baptized by Paul.
[00:32:44] “I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.”
[00:32:51] The only way that a slave could be freed, under Roman law, was through a writ of manumission issued by his or her owner. When this letter was written, Paul was under house arrest in Rome and harboring a runaway slave, a fugitive, was a serious crime under Roman law which meant that Paul had no legal option available to him other than to return Onesimus to Philemon.
[00:33:24] And Paul is truly torn here. We can hear that in his words! His affection for Onesimus is quite apparent… he even calls Onesimus “my heart.” Paul is obeying civil law but is clearly unhappy about it.
[00:33:51] Paul goes on…
“I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel;”
[00:34:04] That sentence is why Paul felt Onesimus’ name was so appropriate… because Onesimus, like Timothy, could have been helpful to Paul during his imprisonment and, had Roman law allowed it, Paul would have gladly kept Onesimus with him.
[00:34:21] And notice, it almost appears that Paul is scolding Philemon. The idea that Onesimus could serve Paul on Philemon's behalf seems to suggest that Philemon wasn't supporting Paul during his imprisonment, despite his having the means to do so. He wasn't sending him any support… he wasn't visiting him himself… he wasn't sending others to help him.
[00:34:50] Paul was on his own, except for Timothy - and then Onesimus.
[00:34:58] “but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will.”
[00:35:11] Paul cannot legally keep Onesimus from Philemon - both Paul and Philemon know that fact well - but Paul is hoping that this letter will encourage Philemon to send Onesimus back to Paul… that's what he means by “I prefer to do nothing without your consent.”
[00:35:37] And Paul is clearly doing his best to convince Philemon to do the right thing here… to free Onesimus and send him back to be a companion to Paul.
[00:35:53] But Philemon has to choose to do that of his own free will, right? Paul says that in the letter - not because Paul compels him to do so, but out of Philemon's own free will.
[00:36:15] “Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while,”
Meaning when Onesimus ran away from Philemon.
“that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.”
[00:36:41] We can tell from the context of this letter that Philemon was Baptized by Paul, probably during his Third Missionary Journey (53 to 57 AD).
[00:36:56] And it was during that journey that he spent a considerable amount of time in Colossae. The fact that both Philemon and Onesimus were baptized by Paul would then make them brothers in Christ, brothers in the Christian faith… a bond that should be far more important than that of master and slave - or any other bond.
And that takes us back to what Jesus himself said in the Gospel… that we must love him more… we must love Jesus more than anything else, and establishing new relationships based on faith in Jesus is part of loving him more… more than owning another person as property, despite the legality of it in the Roman Empire, more than even being able to see someone in that light, since that point of view runs into counter to true Christianity.
[00:38:06] So, if Philemon is truly committed to his Christian faith, Paul is saying that Philemon must now see Onesimus only as a brother in Christ and not as a possession.
[00:38:27] “So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.”
[00:38:37] Meaning that Philemon should treat Onesimus with the same respect and affection that he would show for Paul himself.
[00:38:51] This letter shows the tension between Gospel values and the capriciousness of accepted legal and social norms. This letter dealt with slavery - a grave moral, ethical and social evil in our time, but still accepted in the Roman Empire at the time the letter was written.
[00:39:18] In our modern world, the tension between Gospel values and those changeable social and legal norms arises over things like immigration, homelessness, mental illness, poverty, and - all too often - racial disparity and inequality.
[00:39:49] The way any Christian sees another person must be informed and transformed by our faith in Christ because we must see Christ in everyone… and we must love him more than anything.
[00:40:16] God's grace, if we allow it to, will alter our relationships and transform our viewpoints, opening up new possibilities to fully and joyfully live our faith.
[00:40:34] But that means that we must be different… we must adopt new patterns of mutual respect, mutual concern, and mutual responsibility for our fellow human beings AND for the world in which we all live.
[00:41:00] That is a tall order, but Jesus promises to help us along the way. He sent his Holy Spirit to help us, to strengthen us, to guide us.
[00:41:16] How can we be faithful disciples - faithful Christians - and turn that down?
[00:41:26] If you would like to reach out to me with questions or comments, send me an email at
[email protected]
Thank you for spending this time with me and until next we meet, may God shower his blessings upon you like a soft and gentle rain, and may he hold you, safe and secure, in the palm of his hand.
From His Word to Our Hearts is produced by SFS Audio Solutions.
The content of the show was assembled by me, Sally Moriarty-Flask.
Our music was composed by Jimmy Flask and is used with the permission of the composer. All rights reserved.
Information regarding references used in preparing the exegesis for this podcast is available upon request.
Thank you for listening and God bless.
