Introduction

After the rev­el­a­tion of Jesus’ iden­tity as the Mes­si­ah of God; after Jesus’ explan­a­tion of the implic­a­tion of his being the anoin­ted One of God; and after list­ing the con­di­tions of being his dis­ciple (cf. Luke 9:18–24), Jesus heads to Jer­u­s­alem, the final des­tin­a­tion of his mis­sion and the locus (place) where his mis­sion will be con­sum­mated (cf. Luke 9:51). There­fore, with the sol­emn for­mula now it happened that as the days drew near for him to be taken up, he res­ol­utely turned his face towards Jer­u­s­alem in Luke 9:51, Luke begins the great account of Jesus’ jour­ney from Galilee to Jer­u­s­alem. From this moment, Jesus con­stantly jour­neys towards Jer­u­s­alem (cf. 9:51.53.57; 10:38). This is the jour­ney of the suf­fer­ing mes­si­ah, who how­ever, will resur­rect after three days, and will later ascend to the Fath­er, who will in turn, send the Holy Spir­it to the dis­ciples, to con­tin­ue to pro­clam­a­tion of the mes­sage of salvation.

Discipleship and tolerance.

To tol­er­ate means to accept or sup­port with patience unpleas­ant or pain­ful things, situ­ations or con­di­tions; to admit the pres­ence or the com­pany of someone whose pres­ence is not so much appre­ci­ated; to admit and respect opin­ions and/or con­vic­tions dif­fer­ent from ours; to accept with com­pre­hen­sion and under­stand­ing oth­er people’s atti­tudes and beha­viours even if we dis­ap­prove them.

Now, con­cern­ing tol­er­ance, in the first place, tol­er­ance could be described as the phys­ic­al or spir­itu­al abil­ity to bear or sup­port things, situ­ations or con­di­tions that can be harm­ful or unpleas­ant. In this case, we could talk of tol­er­ance to the cold, tol­er­ance to bad gov­ernance, tol­er­ance of the organ­ism to cer­tain medi­cine, tol­er­ance to an unfa­vour­able cli­mate, tol­er­ance of the insens­ib­il­ity and god­less­ness of those in author­ity. Then, by exten­sion, tol­er­ance refers to atti­tude of a per­son that allows or accepts polit­ic­al con­vic­tions, reli­gious con­vic­tions, eth­ics, etc., or beha­viours that dif­fer from his/hers. Fur­ther­more, it is also the demon­stra­tion of under­stand­ing, indul­gence and/or com­pre­hen­sion for the errors, short­com­ings or defects of oth­ers. Tol­er­ance does not mean impassiv­ity or passiv­ity. Tol­er­ance is giv­ing to every oth­er human being every right that you claim for your­self. Tol­er­ance is love and serving one anoth­er in love. This is the under­ly­ing theme and mes­sage of Paul’s mes­sage to the Gala­tian Chris­ti­ans in 5:1–18 (cf. Second Read­ing). Tol­er­ance is not a favour. It is an obligation.

Conclusion           

There are many ways of answer­ing the call to dis­ciple­ship. Mar­riage is one of such ways. Like the Sac­ra­ment of Orders, Mar­riage is also a voca­tion. Just as we have voca­tion to the Priest­hood and to the Pro­fessed Life, so also we have voca­tion to the Mar­ried Life. As Jeff Jones rightly observes “dis­ciple­ship is the ongo­ing, lifelong pro­cess of dis­cern­ing and liv­ing out God’s call to be the per­son God cre­ated you to be as you par­ti­cip­ate in God’s pur­pose in cre­ation in your par­tic­u­lar time and place.” And I would add, in your par­tic­u­lar voca­tion and profession.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 13^th Sunday is found in The Word of Life, vol. III, pages 346–357. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.