Thoughts on detachment

Luke 9:57-62

Friends, our Gospel for today is an especially good exemplification of the principle of detachment. When Jesus is the unambiguous center of your life, then everything else finds its place around him, in relation to him. And anything that would assert itself and take his position must be resisted wholeheartedly as an idol and a temptation.

We watch as Jesus clarifies for his disciples how a number of worldly goods fall away, once he is recognized as Lord. I want to look closely at one of these. As Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem, a man approaches him and says, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus makes the laconic remark, "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." One of the things, quite naturally, that we savor is home, a place to stay, a nest, a man cave. There is just something uniquely awful about being displaced, about starting all over. We all want a place to lay our heads.

But if Jesus is first in our lives, then we cannot absolutize this good thing. We have to be willing to follow him wherever he wants us to go. 

Bishop Robert Barron