The Cost and Fulfillment of Love

Voice over by Esther Han

Rom 13:8-10; Psalm: 111; Lk 14:25-33

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, the Word of God today presents us with the beautiful, demanding, and ultimately liberating logic of the Gospel. It calls us beyond a faith of mere sentiment into a discipleship of radical commitment, revealing that the path to true freedom is wholehearted surrender to the law of love.

The Gospel of Luke delivers a jarring message. Great crowds are following Jesus, perhaps drawn by His miracles and compelling words. But He turns to them and issues a challenge that would have stunned them: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother… and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Scripture scholars clarify that the Semitic idiom “to hate” here means “to love less.” Jesus is not commanding animosity, but demanding supreme allegiance. He insists that our love for Him must be so primary that all other precious attachments—to family, to our own life—seem like hatred by comparison. He underscores this with two parables: a man building a tower and a king going to war. Both must calculate the cost. So must we. Discipleship is not a passive following; it is a deliberate choice to carry our cross, a conscious embracing of the sacrifices required.

This call to total commitment finds its true meaning and its enabling power in the words of Saint Paul. He writes, “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another.” While Jesus demands we “renounce all our possessions,” Paul reveals the one debt that remains: the debt of love. This is not a burden, but the key to freedom. For, as Paul explains, “Whoever loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” All the commandments are summed up in the simple, yet infinitely profound, command: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. The cross Jesus commands us to carry is precisely the instrument of this self-giving love.

The radical detachment Jesus demands is not for its own sake, but for the sake of a radical attachment to God and, consequently, to our neighbor in God. We renounce possessive love to learn gratuitous love. We calculate the cost of discipleship and discover that the only currency is charity. As Saint John Paul II taught, “The law of the Lord is perfectly summed up in love… The Cross is the living and complete expression of this law of love.”

The comfort and strength for us is this: the Lord who commands the impossible also provides the means. He does not ask us to calculate our strength, but to rely on His. He who endured the Cross for love of us now invites us to take up our own, smaller crosses, trusting that His grace is sufficient. The “cost” is our selfishness; the “reward” is the freedom to love as we were created to love.

How do we apply this? We “calculate the cost” by honestly asking: What comfort, what relationship, what personal ambition am I clinging to more tightly than Christ? We then take up our cross in daily life: by forgiving a persistent injury, by patiently serving a difficult family member, by forgoing a legitimate pleasure for the sake of prayer or charity.

Let us ask for the courage of the saints. As the great Saint Augustine prayed, “Lord, command what you will, and grant what you command.” May we, empowered by His Spirit, embrace the cost of discipleship, and in so doing, discover the joyful fulfillment of the law of love. Amen.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.