There is a line in the Gospel that many modern ears simply cannot tolerate.

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” – Luke XIV.26

At first glance, it sounds like a contradiction. Christ, the coming Infant King, who commands us to honor our father and mother, who blesses marriage, who weeps at the tomb of a friend, now appears to demand hatred of those closest to us. But the Church has never understood this passage as a call to cruelty or neglect. It is something far more demanding and far more unsettling to the modern mind.

Christ is teaching us the cost of right order.

The modern world, formed by centuries of “reformed” and Enlightenment thinking and concretized by Modernism, assumes that love is governed by sentiment and preference. We love what feels good. We protect what comforts us. We avoid whatever threatens our emotional equilibrium. In such a world, Christ’s words feel extreme, even offensive.

But Christ is not attacking family. He is attacking disordered love. Fr Henry James Coleridge (d. 1893) explains:

Now He requires, not simply that no one should be loved more than He, but comparative hatred of those who are dearest to us in the natural order, if our regard for them in any way interferes with our love for Him. In the former case He had meant that, though we are to love our own with all due natural affection, still, we are not to allow the love of them to come between us and our Lord, that love is to give way, as a motive of action, to the love of our Lord.

The difference now made is that our Lord speaks of hatred, that is, that besides choosing our Lord’s will and the requirements of His law before all human love, we are to have a most true aversion and hatred for any human affection, however natural and legitimate, which interferes with what we are to feel and do out of love for our Lord. And it is the same with our own life also. That is, we are not simply to surrender it, if so be, in obedience to our duty to Him. We are to be ready for this with a real and true hatred of it, in so far as it comes between us and Him.

Tertullian of Carthage (220) provides more if we need:

Parents, wives, children, will have to be left behind, for God’s sake. In the same manner, therefore, we maintain that the other announcements too refer to the condition of martyrdom. “He” says Jesus, “who will value his own life also more than me, is not worthy of me.”

And finally from the Haydock translation of the Douay-Rheims (1849):

Hate not: The law of Christ does not allow us to hate even our enemies, much less our parents: but the meaning of the text is, that we must be in that disposition of soul so as to be willing to renounce and part with every thing, how near or dear so ever it may be to us, that would keep us from following Christ. (Challoner) The word hate is not to be taken in its proper sense, but to be expounded by the words of Christ, (Matthew x. 37) that no man must love his father more than God (Witham) Christ wishes to show us what dispositions are necessary in him who desires to become his disciple; (Theophylactus) and to teach us that we must not be discouraged, if we meet with many hardships and labours in our journey to our heavenly country. (St. Gregory) And if for our sakes, Christ even seemingly renounced his own mother, saying, Who is my mother, and who are my brethren? why do you wish to be treated more delicately than your Lord? (St. Ambrose) He wished also to demonstrate to us, that the hatred he here inculcates, is not to proceed from any disaffection towards our parents, but from charity for ourselves; for immediately he adds, and his own life also. From which words it is evident, that in our love we must hate our brethren as we do ourselves.

The Church has always taught an ordo amoris–an order of loves. God must come first, not because he is jealous in the petty sense, but because only when God is first can everything else be loved rightly–or more to the point, correctly. When family, career, nation, or even personal safety is placed above obedience to Christ, those goods cease to be goods at all. They become idols.

And some of us might skim over this article thinking we already do that when in actuality most people unwittingly substitute the creature over the Creator in the spirit of the second greatest commandment that says “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

I did it for most of my life.

The potential innocent oversight is why Christ intensifies his language here. He speaks not merely of loving him more than others, but of “hating” whatever competes with him. The word shocks us precisely because it exposes how easily we excuse compromise when it is dressed as affection. Christ does this frequently in his teaching–he chooses words that will rattle people enough so the lesson doesn’t fall on deaf ears. There are certain things he makes memorable.

The saints understood this instinctively. They loved their families deeply, of course. Many of them suffered precisely because of that love. Yet when the moment came–when loyalty to Christ demanded sacrifice–they did not negotiate. They did not postpone obedience. They did not sentimentalize their way out of the Cross.

Just see the story of St Rita and her prayers that God do whatever it takes before her two sons fall into mortal sin–commit murder to avenge the death of their father.

What mother would choose this today? This is the difference between the Church Militant and the Church we have been conditioned to trust.

The Church Militant still exists in a remnant, and the remnant is small. But it is keeping the flame alight as some always must do. She is not violent or harsh, but unflinching. She knows that discipleship is not an accessory added to an otherwise family-oriented life. It is a reorientation of the entire person towards that family. Christ makes this plain when he tells us to count the cost–like a builder laying a foundation or a king preparing for war. Following him is not an emotional impulse that comes and goes with the Sundays. It is a lifelong campaign that will not only be painful–but force us to choose between two treasures at times.

Modernism and all its Hallmark sentimentality despises this language. It prefers a Christianity without renunciation, without hierarchy, without sacrifice. It recasts faith as the feels and obedience as oppression. In such a framework, from such a false premise, Christ’s demand sounds unreasonable.

But Christ has never hidden the truth. He never promises safety here. What he promises is the cold of a lonely stable, is tribulation, is suffering.

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But he also promises that if we stay with him, we’ll attain never-ending joy because of it.

This is why the Gospel does not end with hate or fear but with salt. Salt is good, Christ says–but only if it retains its savor. Salt that has lost its sting is useless. The Church that refuses renunciation, that fears discomfort, that prioritizes acceptance over fidelity–even amidst the joys of this false Christmas season–loses her preserving power. She becomes indistinguishable from the world she was meant to convert. St John Chrysostom of the fifth century:

…[If] you continue sharply to brace them up, and then are evil spoken of, rejoice; for** this is the very use of salt, to sting the corrupt, and make them smart.** And so their censure follows of course, in no way harming you, but rather testifying your firmness. But if through fear of it you give up the earnestness that becomes you, you will have to suffer much more grievously, being both evil spoken of, and despised by all.

In other words, we are commanded to say these difficult things to each other, else we will be “trodden under foot.”

The hatred Christ demands, then, is not emotional hostility but holy detachment kept alive by the same salt. It is the willingness to let everything else fall away rather than let him go. It is the courage to suffer misunderstanding, loss, and even persecution rather than dilute the truth.

This is not hatred of family. It is right order. It is love purified by Truth.

And in an age that has forgotten how to suffer well, Christ’s words sound saltier than they are. They are not a blade. They are a warm cloth. They tell us plainly what is required, so that we are not deceived into thinking discipleship can be achieved without cost.

“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

The invitation remains the same as it’s always been. But it will only be accepted by those willing to place Christ the Infant King first–without condition.

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