In today's gospel, Jesus lays down some of His hardest conditions for discipleship: anyone who comes to Him without hating father and mother, without carrying his cross, without renouncing all his possessions, cannot be His disciple.
Drawing from St. Augustine's Confessions, Father Jordan tells the moving story of Monica's decades of prayer and tears for her son's conversion — and how St. Ambrose's famous words, "the son of so many tears surely would not perish," offer hope for anyone persisting in prayer without seeing immediate answers.
Examine the gap between who we appear to be and who we truly are — and how encountering Christ, the Truth himself, can heal that discrepancy and lead us to authentic holiness.
