Saint Luke 14.26

The term 'hate' is a Hebraism, a hyperbolic manner of speech, in which Our Lord attempts to gain and capture the attention of his listeners. 'To hate one's family' is not a literal command, but a figure of speech designed to do precisely what it has done for you and all others who have ever come across it, to shock, to provoke, to cajole into focus and attention. Our Lord uses this way of speaking to force us to pay attention to what He is teaching. Much like the phrase, 'if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out,' Our Lord is not telling us to do something literal or actual in the physical sense, but to act in the realm of the spirit, to move the heart and mind to God in repentance, in metanoia, the turning of the whole being to God. Our Lord would, of course, never contradict the Fifth Commandment, 'honour thy father and thy mother'; rather, He transforms the commandment to remind us that our highest spiritual and personal obligation, duty and commitment is to love God first, to love God above all else, above all human beings or created things, thus fulfilling the First Commandment to worship God and serve Him alone.

The Lord Jesus shows us the true nature of the Commandments: 'whoever does the will of my Father is my mother, sister, brother.' Natural and biological and personal family ties cannot and should not lay any claim on us in such a way that we neglect or demote our principal family, which is the Church, the spiritual communion of God in Christ and His brethren, the Body of Christ of which He is the Head and we are the living members. Indeed, to be faithful to God we must fulfil our natural family responsibilities and live a life of divine and supernatural charity towards our earthly family, while realising that this true life of love is only possible, is only completed and achieved, insofar as we love and serve God above everything else. If we love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, everything else, every human relationship, will fall into its proper place and will be ordered and sanctified by God. That is what Our Lord means, in jarring and purposely disturbing language. It seems He had as hard a time getting His disciples' attention as we modern speakers have with our own audiences! Jesus is commanding us to love: to love God, and then, in, with and through God, to love others in, with and through the infused theological virtue of charity.

To paraphrase the Church Fathers: 'Jesus is not saying that we cannot love our family, but we dare not love them more than we love God' (Saint Cyril of Alexandria). 'We cannot let our natural mother and our affections for her supersede our love for Holy Mother Church, which nourishes us with food that lasts for eternity' (Saint Augustine of Hippo). 'We are to hate our families only insofar as they an obstacle to eternal life' (Saint Augustine of Hippo). 'To be a disciple of Jesus requires invincible fortitude and unwavering zeal' (Saint Cyril of Alexandria).