As the Church celebrates the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Fr. Marion Nguyen, OSB, offers his thoughts on the day’s liturgical readings under the theme: “Preferring nothing whatever to Christ.”
By Fr. Marion Nguyen, OSB*
The tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus’ great apostolic charge, delivered as he sends the Twelve into a world that will often reject them. He does not recruit disciples with promises of comfort, success, or worldly acclaim.
Instead, Jesus practices a kind of divine transparency, revealing from the very beginning the true cost of following him. He wants no one to embrace discipleship under false pretenses.
Yet today’s Gospel does more than describe the cost of discipleship; it reveals its deepest purpose. At the heart of Jesus’ words lies a single question: Whom do you love most?
Jesus’ opening words are among the most demanding in all the Gospels: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37).
At first glance, these words can seem harsh. Yet Jesus is not commanding us to love our families less. Rather, he calls us to love everyone through him rather than apart from him. Every human affection finds its proper order only when Christ becomes our greatest love.
Saint Benedict captures this same truth at the culmination of his Rule. After describing the monastic life in all its practical details, he concludes with the summit of Christian discipleship: “Let them prefer absolutely nothing to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life” (RB 72:11–12).
This is not just a monastic ideal but the heart of today’s Gospel. Every other love becomes purified, strengthened, and rightly ordered when Jesus occupies first place.
Jesus immediately explains what such preference entails: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:38). Remarkably, he speaks of the cross long before Calvary.
In doing so, Jesus reveals that his Passion will not be a tragic accident of history but the freely embraced fulfillment of the Father’s redemptive plan. Even more, he teaches that his own self-giving love becomes the pattern of every disciple’s life. Consequently, the cross is not simply an instrument of suffering but the form of authentic love.
To love Jesus above all else inevitably requires the daily surrender of our own will, ambitions, comforts, and self-centered desires. Saint Gregory observes that Christ prepares his disciples in advance because the greatest temptation is not simply to begin generously but to persevere faithfully when enthusiasm fades. The daily cross is often less dramatic than martyrdom; it is the continual surrender of pride, self-will, and the desire to choose our own way over Christ’s.
This leads naturally to Jesus’ paradox: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10:39). Here Jesus overturns every human instinct toward self-preservation.
The more tightly we cling to control, recognition, or security, the more life slips through our fingers. However, the one who entrusts everything to Jesus discovers the freedom and joy that only self-giving love can produce.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux reminds us that this radical discipleship is normally not lived through extraordinary acts of heroism but through ordinary acts of charity. Jesus brings the immense mystery of the cross into the simplest moments of everyday life: “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is a disciple—amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward” (Mt 10:42).
The cup of cold water becomes the quiet, daily expression of a heart that has already chosen Jesus above all else. Hidden kindness, patient speech, and unnoticed sacrifice become the ordinary weight of the cross.
Although today’s Gospel begins in verse 37, Jesus has already spent the earlier part of the chapter preparing the Twelve for what lies ahead.
The demands he now places before them are not isolated commands but part of a larger promise: they will never suffer alone. He answers our distress not with abstract explanations but with the assurance that he has already walked every step of the road before us. Are you slandered or maligned? “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Mt 10:25). Does your own family turn on you or disagree with your devotion? He nods, understanding completely; “a man’s foes will be those of his own household” (Mt 10:36; Mk 3:21). Are you terrified that your strength will fail when things become difficult? Jesus promises that the necessary courage will be given: “for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Mt 10:20).
Every sacrifice for his sake becomes the privileged place where the disciple shares the very life of his Master, discovering that what appears to the world as utter loss is, in Christ, the beginning of true life.
Because of our wounded human nature, we will often stumble along this path. We will discover attachments we did not know we possessed, and our self-will will resist surrender.
This is why Benedict proposes humility, obedience, stability, and conversatio morum as the daily school of discipleship. These are not burdens imposed upon us but practical tools by which Christ gradually becomes the center of every thought, every affection, every decision, and every action.
Jesus began with a question hidden within a command: “Whom do you love most?” Every disciple answers that question not only with words but with the choices of each day—with the crosses we accept, the desires we surrender, the stranger we welcome, and even the cup of cold water we offer.
When Christ truly becomes our greatest love, then every other love finds its proper place. Then Saint Benedict’s final exhortation becomes not only the heart of monastic life but the vocation of every Christian: “Let them prefer absolutely nothing to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life” (RB 72:11–12).
* Abbot of St. Martin Abbey—Lacey, Washington
