1. In our examination of the Gospel signs that reveal Christ’s awareness of his divinity, we emphasised in the previous catechesis his request to his disciples to have faith in him: ‘Believe in God; believe also in me’ (Jn 14:1) – a request that only God can make. Jesus demands this faith when he manifests a divine power that surpasses all the forces of nature, for example in the raising of Lazarus (cf. Jn 11:38–44); he also demands it in times of trial, such as faith in the saving power of his cross, as he declares as early as his conversation with Nicodemus (cf. Jn 3:14–15); and it is faith in his divinity: ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (Jn 14:9).
Faith refers to an invisible reality, which is beyond the senses and experience, and transcends the limits of human reason itself (“argumentum non apparentium”; “the evidence of things not seen” (cf. Heb 11:1); it refers, as Saint Paul says, to “things which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man”, but which God has prepared for those who love him (cf. 1 Cor 2:9). Jesus demands such faith when, on the day before his death on the cross—a death that was, from a human perspective, ignominious—he tells the apostles that he is going to prepare a place for them in the Father’s house (cf. Jn 14:2).
2. These mysterious things, this invisible reality, are identified with the infinite Good of God, eternal Love, supremely worthy of being loved above all else. Therefore, together with the call to faith, Jesus sets forth the commandment to love God ‘above all else’—a commandment already present in the Old Testament, but repeated and reinforced by Jesus in a new light. It is true that when answering the question ‘Which is the greatest commandment of the Law?’, Jesus quotes the words of the Mosaic Law: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind’ (Mt 22:37; cf. Dt 6:5). But the full meaning that the commandment takes on in Jesus’ words emerges from reference to other elements of the context in which he moves and teaches. Undoubtedly, he wishes to impress upon us that only God can and must be loved above all creation; and only in relation to God can there be, in human beings, the requirement for a love that surpasses all else. Only God, by virtue of this demand for radical and total love, can call man to ‘follow him’ without reservation, without limitation, in an indivisible way, as we already read in the Old Testament: ‘You shall follow the Lord your God, keep his commands, serve him and remain faithful to him’ (Deut 13:5). Indeed, only God ‘is good’ in the absolute sense (cf. Mk 10:18; also Mt 19:17). Only he ‘is love’ (1 Jn 4:16) by essence and by definition. But here is an element that appears new and surprising in the life and teaching of Christ.
3. Jesus calls people to follow him personally. This call lies, one might say, at the very heart of the Gospel. On the one hand, Jesus issues this call; on the other, we hear the evangelists speak of men who follow him, and indeed, of some of them who leave everything to follow him.
Let us consider all those calls of which the evangelists have told us: “One of the disciples said to him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ But Jesus replied, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead’” (Mt 8:21–22): a drastic way of saying, ‘Leave everything behind, immediately, for my sake.’ So it stands in Matthew’s account. Luke adds the apostolic connotation to this calling: “Go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Lk 9:60). On another occasion, passing by the tax office, he said—and almost commanded—Matthew, who bears witness to the event: “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him (Mt 9:9; cf. Mk 2:13–14).
Following Jesus often means not only leaving one’s occupations behind and severing worldly ties, but also detaching oneself from one’s comfortable circumstances, and indeed giving one’s possessions to the poor. Not everyone feels able to make such a radical break: the rich young man did not feel up to it, even though he had observed the Law since childhood and had perhaps earnestly sought a path to perfection. But ‘on hearing this (that is, Jesus’ invitation), he went away sad, for he had great wealth’ (Mt 19:22; cf. Mk 10:22). Others, however, not only accept that ‘Follow me’, but, like Philip of Bethsaida, feel the need to share with others their conviction that they have found the Messiah (Jn 1:43ff.). Simon himself is told right from their first meeting: ‘You shall be called Cephas (which means Peter)’ (Jn 1:42). The evangelist John notes that Jesus “looked intently at him”: in that intense gaze lay the most powerful and compelling “Follow me” ever. But it seems that Jesus, given Peter’s very special calling (and perhaps also his natural temperament), wished to allow his ability to assess and accept that invitation to mature gradually. For Peter, the literal “Follow me” would in fact come after the washing of the feet at the Last Supper (cf. John 13:36), and then, definitively, after the Resurrection, on the shore of Lake Tiberias (John 21:19).
4. Undoubtedly, Peter and the other apostles – with the exception of Judas – understood and accepted the call to follow Jesus as a total self-giving of themselves and their possessions to the cause of proclaiming the Kingdom of God. They themselves would remind Jesus, through Peter: ‘See, we have left everything and followed you’ (Mt 19:27). Luke elaborates: ‘all our possessions’ (Luke 18:28). And Jesus himself seems to wish to clarify exactly which ‘possessions’ are meant when he replies to Peter: ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left home, or wife, or brothers, or parents, or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this present age and eternal life in the age to come’ (Luke 18:29–30).
In Matthew (Matthew 19:29), the text also specifies the forsaking of sisters, mother and fields ‘for my sake’; whoever does so, Jesus promises, ‘will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life’.
In Mark, there is a further clarification regarding the forsaking of all these things ‘for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel’ and concerning the reward: ‘Even now a hundredfold—houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life’ (Mk 10:29–30).
Without worrying for the moment about the figurative language used by Jesus, we ask ourselves: Who is this man who calls people to follow him and promises those who do so so many rewards and even ‘eternal life’? Can a mere Son of Man promise so much, and be believed and followed, and exert such a hold not only over those happy disciples, but over thousands and millions of people throughout the ages?
5. In reality, those disciples remembered well the authority with which Jesus had called them to follow him, not hesitating to demand of them a radical commitment, expressed in terms that might have seemed paradoxical, such as when he said he had come to bring ‘not peace but a sword’—that is, to create separations and divisions even within families in order to follow him—and then declared: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37–38). Luke’s wording is even more forceful and almost harsh: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate (in Jewish terms: does not detach themselves from) their father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters and even their own life, they cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26).
Faced with these words of Jesus, one cannot help but reflect on the loftiness and arduousness of the Christian vocation. Undoubtedly, the concrete forms of following Christ are graded by him according to the circumstances, possibilities, missions and charisms of individuals and social groups. Jesus’ words, as he himself says, are ‘spirit and life’ (cf. Jn 6:63), and one cannot expect them to be realised in exactly the same way for everyone. Yet, according to St Thomas Aquinas, the Gospel’s call to heroic self-denial—such as the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and self-denial in order to follow Jesus—and the same may be said of the self-offering of one’s life through martyrdom rather than betraying the faith and the following of Christ—commits everyone ‘secundum praeparationem animi’ (cf. S. Thomae, *Summa Theologiae*; II-II, q. 184, a. 7, ad 1), that is, in terms of the spirit’s readiness to fulfil what is required should one be called to do so; and therefore they entail for everyone a lesser degree of detachment, a spirit of self-offering, a self-surrender to Christ, without which there is no true evangelical spirit.
6. The Gospel itself shows that there are particular vocations, dependent on a choice made by Christ: such as that of the apostles and of many disciples, indicated quite clearly by Mark when he writes: “He went up the mountain, called to him those whom he wished, and they came to him. He appointed twelve to be with him . . .” (Mk 3:13–14). Jesus himself, according to John, says to the apostles in his final discourse: ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you . . .’ (Jn 15:16).
There is no indication that he definitively condemned those who did not agree to follow him on a path of total dedication to the cause of the Gospel (cf. the case of the rich young man) (Mk 10:17–27). There is something more that calls upon the free generosity of the individual. It is certain, however, that the vocation to faith and Christian love is universal and binding: faith in the word of Jesus, love for God above all else and for one’s neighbour as oneself, not least because ‘whoever . . . does not love their brother whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen’ (1 John 4:20).
7. In setting out the requirement to respond to the call to follow him, Jesus makes no secret of the fact that following him entails sacrifice, at times even the supreme sacrifice. Indeed, he says to his disciples: ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it . . .’ (Mt 16:24–25).
Mark emphasises that, along with his disciples, Jesus had also gathered the crowd, and to all of them he spoke of the self-denial required of those who wish to follow him, of taking up the cross and of the loss of life ‘for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel’ (Mk 8:34–35). And he did this after speaking of his impending passion and death! (cf. Mk 8:31–32).
8. At the same time, however, Jesus proclaims the blessedness of those who are persecuted ‘for the sake of the Son of Man’ (Lk 6:22): ‘Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great’ (Mt 5:12).
And once again we ask ourselves: Who is this man who authoritatively calls us to follow him, foretells hatred, insults and persecutions of every kind (cf. Lk 6:22), and promises a ‘reward in heaven’? Only a Son of Man who was conscious of being the Son of God could speak in this way. This is how the apostles and disciples understood him, and they passed on his revelation and his message to us. This is how we too wish to understand him, echoing the words of the apostle Thomas: ‘My Lord and my God’.
[Pope John Paul II, General Audience, 28 October 1987]