Published: September 30, 2026
There is a particular kind of honesty in today's Gospel that we do not always expect from Jesus. He is on the road toward Jerusalem, and along the way three people approach him with what sounds like eagerness. One promises to follow him wherever he goes. Another asks for time to bury his father. A third wants to say goodbye to his family first. To each of them, Jesus gives an answer that seems, at first hearing, almost severe. Yet beneath the severity is a love that refuses to let discipleship become something cheap.
Consider the first man. His offer is generous and sweeping, and Jesus does not applaud it. Instead he reminds him that foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Jesus is not discouraging the man so much as telling him the truth about the road. To follow Christ is to share his life, and his life was not marked by comfort, security, or a settled place in the world. Many of us begin our spiritual lives with real enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm is a gift. But Jesus gently asks whether our zeal is attached to him or to an idea of what following him will feel like. The road with Christ goes through ordinary weariness, disappointment, and sacrifice before it reaches resurrection.
The second exchange is harder for modern ears. A man asks to bury his father first, and Jesus tells him to let the dead bury their dead while he goes to proclaim the kingdom of God. We should be careful not to hear coldness here. The Church has always honored the burial of the dead as a work of mercy, and Jesus himself wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Many scholars and Fathers of the Church understand the man's request as a way of saying that he wanted to wait until his family obligations were settled, which could have meant years. Jesus' point is about urgency. The kingdom of God is not an item to be scheduled after everything else has been taken care of. When Christ calls, the call has a claim on the present moment. The danger is not that we love our families too much but that we keep postponing the one thing that gives every other love its proper order.
The third man seems to make the mildest request of all. He only wants to say farewell to those at home. Yet Jesus answers with an image from the fields: no one who puts a hand to the plow and keeps looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. Anyone who has watched a farmer at work understands the picture. A furrow cannot be kept straight by someone who is looking over his shoulder. The plow follows the eyes. In the spiritual life, a divided glance produces a crooked line. Looking back with longing at what we have left behind, whether a comfortable habit, an old grievance, or a former way of living, slowly turns our attention away from the work in front of us.
It is fitting that the Church gives us this Gospel on the memorial of Saint Jerome. Jerome was a man of great learning who might have spent his life in the comfort of Rome's literary circles. Instead he left the city, lived for years as a hermit in the desert, and eventually settled in Bethlehem, where he devoted himself to translating the Scriptures into Latin. His labor gave the Church the Vulgate, which shaped Christian life for a thousand years. Jerome was not an easy man, and his temper was famous. But he understood what today's Gospel asks of us: that once we have set our hand to the work God gives us, we must keep going. He is also remembered for the conviction that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. His whole life was a furrow drawn straight toward the Word of God.
What does all this ask of us on an ordinary Wednesday? Perhaps the first question is where our eyes are resting. Most of us are not being called to leave home and become hermits. We are being called to follow Christ in the particular fields where we have been placed, in our marriages, our workplaces, our parishes, and our friendships. The temptation is rarely dramatic. It is more often the quiet pull to postpone, to hedge, or to keep one foot in the old life just in case. We say that we will pray more seriously once things calm down, or that we will forgive once the other person apologizes, or that we will return to the sacraments after the busy season passes. Jesus answers each of these with the same tenderness and firmness: the time to follow is now.
There is also a word of comfort hidden in this passage. Jesus does not demand that we plow perfectly. He asks that we keep facing forward. The saints, Jerome among them, were not people who never stumbled or looked back. They were people who, each time they noticed their eyes wandering, turned them again toward Christ. When we fail, the remedy is not despair but a return, and the sacrament of Reconciliation is one of the great gifts the Lord gives us for exactly this purpose. Every confession is a chance to put our hand back on the plow.
Finally, we might notice that Jesus himself is the first one who does not look back. Luke tells us earlier in this chapter that he has set his face toward Jerusalem. He knows what waits for him there, and he goes anyway, for love of us. When Jesus asks us to keep our eyes forward, he is not asking for anything he has not already given. The one who calls us is also the one who walks ahead of us and makes the road passable. Our task is to keep close to him, and to trust that the field he has given us to plow, however ordinary it may look, is part of his kingdom.
So as this day goes on, we can bring one simple prayer to the Lord. Jesus, show me where I have been looking back, and give me the grace to follow you now. Let us ask Saint Jerome to intercede for us, that we might love the Word of God as he did and give ourselves to the work in front of us with steady hearts. The kingdom of God is near, and it is worth every backward glance we are willing to lay down.