What does Jesus mean when He says we must renounce all possessions in order to be His disciples?
The passage in question is found in the Gospel of Luke: “Every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). Taken out of context, it sounds like a strict command that everyone must relinquish all personal ownership in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. Certainly many saints throughout history did just that. For most believers, however, it is an invitation to follow Christ wholeheartedly in perfect freedom.
The passage reminds us that all Christians are expected to follow the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience according to their state in life. For the average Christian, that doesn’t mean ceasing to own personal property. It means that we are called to cling to nothing and live simple and generous lives. If our pursuit of material goods gets in the way of our relationship with Christ, then clearly we have not “renounced all possessions” in the sense that Jesus intended.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, gave an excellent summary of how we can approach this. At the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises, he laid the groundwork in what he called the “First Principle and Foundation.” In it, he states that all created things exist to help us achieve the end for which we are created, namely, to worship, honor and serve God in this life and live with Him forever in the next. With that in mind, to the extent to which those created things bring us closer to that goal, we use them. If they hinder us, then no matter how good they are, we set them aside. St. Ignatius calls us to achieve a kind of “holy indifference” in which we do not prefer a long life to a short one, health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, but only to whatever leads us closer to God.
That’s a tall order and not something achieved overnight. St. Ignatius himself admits that we begin by detaching ourselves from sin and selfishness. Then, as we meditate on the Gospel, Jesus captures our hearts and we accept His call to follow Him and make Him the center of our lives. If Christ is truly at the center, then it is much easier to see what it is in our lives that makes us holier and what reinforces selfishness. Through the regular practice of prayer and discernment, we discover God’s will for us.
St. Ignatius offers a prayer that can be very helpful in surrendering all of our possessions and our very selves to Christ. It is called the Suscipe: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me; to You, O Lord, I return it. All is Yours. Dispose of everything according to Your will. Give me Your love and Your grace; with these I will be rich enough and will desire nothing more. Amen.”
Father Scott Jones is the episcopal vicar for the Northern Vicariate of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
