Three Disciples Who Want to Follow Jesus

Three Disciples Who Want to Follow Jesus

These Disciples who want to follow Jesus are two in Matthew 8:18-22 and three in Luke 9:57-62. One asks Jesus where he lives, another asks for permission to bury his father, and the third to say goodbye to his family. Jesus responds with a radical call to commitment: he has no place to rest his head, the dead must bury their dead, and whoever looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God. This radicality raises questions about the literal or allegorical meaning to give to these demands.

The corresponding episode in Maria Valtorta is well located in Capernaum after the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law as reported by Matthew and there are exactly three successive disciples as described by Luke. The three radical calls find their justification in the context of the event.

Exegesis questioning

• The first to ask to follow Jesus is an anonymous scribe. These are generally opponents of Jesus but this one seems to be an exception. Jesus does not reject him but announces the precarious conditions he will have to face. These are material conditions that were those of itinerant teachers. Exegesis also notes that he informs Jesus of his decision more than asks for permission: "Master, I will follow you wherever you go." It also questions the meaning of Jesus' response which describes material conditions but can also be spiritual.
• The second is about to follow Jesus but asks him: "Allow me first to go bury my father". This was a sacred duty: Jews had to bury their dead on the same day, and the Mourning lasted seven days (shiv'a). Not doing so was a serious transgression of the Torah and a shame for the family. This is why exegesis considers it a metaphor (or hyperbole) applied to the radicality of commitment or that the son will wait for his old father's death before following Jesus.
• The third, mentioned only by Luke, asks Jesus to allow him first to say goodbye to the people of his house. Exegesis generally refers to the detachment from family ties requested by Jesus in other passages later in the Gospels. The reflection would therefore be less unexpected.

In the work of Maria Valtorta

The context

Jesus is in Capernaum where he has just healed the servant of the centurion. It is late February. Only a few days earlier, he had delivered the great teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, not far from there. It is undoubtedly these teachings that captivate the scribe (anonymous) who wants to follow Jesus to hear more. He is not alone: a compact crowd surrounds him.

The scribe

He informs Jesus that he will follow him: "our precepts can in no way be compared to Your word and I am fascinated by it." He asks him which houses he could find him in. To the words of the Gospel, Jesus adds:

"The world is My home, wherever there are spirits to be taught, distress to be relieved, sinners to be redeemed."

It is not great teachings that lift the soul: it is demanding evangelization. Will the scribe be able to conform to it?

"Can you, a doctor in Israel, do what these simple men do for My sake? This is what is required here: sacrifice, obedience, charity for everybody, a mind adaptive for everything and with everybody. Because compliance is alluring. Because he who wishes to cure must bend over all sores. Afterwards there will be the purity of Heaven. But here we are in mud and we have to pull out of the mud, on which we walk, the victims already submerged in it. We cannot lift our clothes and move to one side because the mud is deeper there. Purity must be within us. We must be filled with it so that nothing else can enter. Can you do all that?"

He asks to try, to which Jesus commits and prays for him.

The young man who goes to bury his father

It is Jesus who initiates the dialogue as Luke reports (but not Matthew). "Follow me," he says to a young man who looks at him intently. Elias of Korazim —that's his name—startles; he was going to bury his father who died that day. He must bury him and will follow Jesus afterward.

"Follow Me. Leave the dead to bury their dead. You have already been attracted by Life. On the other hand, you aspired that. Do not weep over the gap Life opened around you to make you a disciple. The maiming of affection is the root of the wings which are born of a man who has become a servant of the Truth. Leave corruption to its own fate. Rise towards the Kingdon of the incorrupt. You will also find the incorruptible pearl of your father there. God calls and passes by. Tomorrow you would no longer find your heart of today or God’s invitation. Come. Go and announce the Kingdom of God."

Elias reflects on these two opposing loves: the love of God and the love of his father. Jesus then asks a young child of about four years old to repeat this prayer with him:

"I bless You, o Father, and I invoke Your light for those who weep in the haze of life. I bless You, o Father, and I invoke Your strength for those who are like a child in need of support. I bless You, o Father, and I invoke Your love that it may cause men to forget everything which is not Yourself, as they can find all good in You, both here and in Heaven, although they cannot believe it”.

Elias makes up his mind. He gives his packages to a companion and comes to Jesus who places the child on the ground after blessing him. He takes the young man by the shoulders and walks like this, to comfort and support him in his effort. Elias will be a faithful disciple until the end, counted among the seventy-two sent out two by two to evangelize.

Mosaic Law requires to "honor your father and your mother" but remains silent about the obligation of a son to bury his father. This obligation, very rooted, is born of rabbinic tradition. Jesus thus challenges traditions which he subordinates to divine law. This is what he will do, for example, by subordinating the imperative law of the Sabbath. What drives Elias is Jesus' affirmation that his father is in Heaven (the Kingdom) and that he honors him by following the path where he will find him.

The one who wants to say goodbye to his family

This other young man (anonymous) wants to follow Elias’s example but asks Jesus for permission to say goodbye to his family. Jesus' answer is brief:

"There are too many roots in your human being. Uproot them and if you cannot, cut them off. One must come to God’s service with spiritual freedom. He who gives himself, must have no ties."

The young man protests: he will manage to free himself.

"No, you would never reach it. God is as exacting as He is infinitely generous in rewarding. If you wish to be a disciple you must embrace your cross and follow Me. Otherwise one remains a simple believer. The way of the servant of God is not strewn with petals of roses. And it is absolute in its demands. No one who has put his hand to the plough to furrow the fields of hearts and spread there the seed of God’s doctrine, can look back to see what he left, what he lost and what he could have had if he had followed another common way. He who does that is not fit for the Kingdom of God. Work upon yourself. Make a man of yourself and then come. Not now."

A catechesis of Jesus

On Monday July 31, 1944, while she was making her daily offerings, Maria Valtorta heard the voice of Jesus "clearly and swiftly" telling her the verse of Matthew 8:55 and explaining it: "Let the dead bury their dead. The dead of the dead are vain preoccupations, worldly worries, humanly felt affections. The 'living' must not occupy themselves with these dead things." A little later Jesus develops his teaching extending it briefly to Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58: "The foxes have their dens and the birds their nests. The Son of Man had no stone where to lay his head."

At that time, Maria Valtorta had not yet received the vision corresponding to the Gospel (this will only happen ten months later, on Sunday June 3, 1945). This catechesis gives the meaning of what she will see and confirms the sense of the radicality asked of the Disciples.

The dead and the living

Jesus develops a metaphor of the "dead" and the "living": The "dead" are not only those who have rejected God, but also the lukewarm, those who, by apathy or excessive attachment to earthly realities, remain spiritually inert:

"I use the term 'dead' for those who, because they have not given themselves entirely to Life, are rendered heavy and slow, cold and inactive, like dead or dying bodies."

These souls, compared to stones without their own energy or oysters attached to a rock, are incapable of responding to the Call of God. Their affection for the world paralyzes them in place. The "living," on the other hand, are those who prioritize God above all else, including legitimate affections (family, home, security):

"Follow me, passing above everything which is not of God."

The Transfiguration of legitimate affections

Jesus uses the image of foxes (which have dens) and birds (which have nests) to illustrate a paradoxical freedom: He himself, the Son of Man, had "no stone where to lay his head", because his unique attachment is to the will of God. Thus, the disciple is called to an even greater inner freedom: not to be burdened by earthly attachments, even holy ones (such as love for one’s family or home), if they become obstacles to following Christ:

"[...] love everything in God in holy fashion […] Let others and other things be observed by way of Me."

This demand is not a rejection of human affections but their transfiguration: to love them in God and for God, submitting them to his primary love.

True rest

Jesus invites to a detachment which is not deprivation, but liberation: Human affections (family, friends) must be lived in charity, without selfishness, and always subordinated to the love of God:

"Oh, if into everything you do or say or love you were to introduce love for Me as a sieve, how pure and holy your affections would become!"

The disciple finds his true rest not in earthly securities but in the Heart of Jesus: "Little John" (Maria Valtorta) […] "has a pillow and a nest: the heart and the breast of his Jesus." The teaching ends with a dynamic image:

"Rise up! Above what is earth. There is so much Heaven for you!"

The disciple is called to fly lightly towards God without being weighed down by the "dead" (worries, lukewarmness, disordered attachments).

Evangelical radicality

This catechesis of Jesus is part of an ancient exegetical and spiritual tradition, where evangelical radicality is understood as liberation rather than deprivation. The call "Let the dead bury their dead" aims to shake the lukewarm and refocus the disciple on the urgency of the Kingdom, an interpretation that Maria Valtorta enriches by describing the "dead" as those who, through their apathy, remain "heavy and inert" before divine Life. This tradition also insists on the necessity to subordinate earthly affections—even legitimate ones—to the love of God, an idea expressed with force in the work of Maria Valtorta: "love everything in God in holy fashion".

This vision matches that of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which sees detachment as a condition to enter the Kingdom, without rejecting created realities, but ordering them to their ultimate end. Far from being a rejection of the world, it is a call to love "in God and for God," a synthesis that Jesus, in the work of Maria Valtorta, illustrates by the image of the disciple whose "pillow and nest" are none other than "the heart and the breast of his Jesus." Thus, his teaching, while repeating the accents of tradition, offers an actualization of this truth: the freedom of the disciple arises from his exclusive attachment to Christ, "the Life," who alone gives meaning to all other loves.

Contribution of Maria Valtorta’s narrative

Three believers, but only one disciple. The scribe marveled at the goodness of Jesus’ teachings, undoubtedly heard on the Mount of Beatitudes, but Jesus exposes to him that they are a path of active charity and invites him to progress. The hesitant disciple defends legitimate human loves but does not put them in order. Jesus does not reject him: he invites him to grow in freedom. Only Elias subordinates everything to the following of Jesus for the Kingdom. Jesus facilitates his final decision. He called him when the other two proposed themselves, as Luke specifies. He burned with desire when the other two only showed strong interest. Thus where the texts of Matthew and Luke highlight the rupture, Maria Valtorta's writings also shed light on Jesus’ pedagogy who adapts his demands to the hearts He knows.

Maria Valtorta’s narrative especially emphasizes the meaning of evangelical radicality (which Jesus develops several times in the Gospel), not as an initiatory trial, but as a transition to a higher level: Following Jesus is not renouncing one’s humanity, but transfiguring it by love.

Analysis of the historical, cultural, and literary context of Biblical texts to better understand what they meant at the time they were written and how they can be interpreted today.

Analysis of the historical, cultural, and literary context of Biblical texts to better understand what they meant at the time they were written and how they can be interpreted today.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992).