How can you love God more than anyone else?

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

In our Gospel today (Matthew 10:37-42), Jesus tells us, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

How demanding! How can we love God more than father, mother, son, or daughter?

Let me try to make inroads into this passage in a roundabout way.

The readings for a Sunday Mass during Ordinary Time follow a certain logic. There is always a link between the Gospel and the First Reading, and the Psalm is always a response to the First Reading. The Second Reading, however, stands apart: it is not chosen to connect thematically with the other texts. Instead, its purpose is to immerse us in as many of the New Testament letters as the season of Ordinary Time allows. An attentive listener may still hear a spiritual resonance among the readings, but this flows from the hearer’s own prayer and experience rather than from any deliberate design.

So what can be the connection between the Gospel and the First Reading? Before scrolling down, try to figure it out for yourself... (The readings can be found here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062826.cfm)

A surface link that can easily be made is between what Jesus says, “Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward” and what the woman from Shunem receives as a reward because of her hospitality to the prophet Elisha. But of course, there are more connections when we start digging deeper.

A seemingly barren couple is blessed with a child. This is a story that appears several times in our Christian lore. It happened to Sarah and Abraham, who met the promise with laughter in Genesis 17:17, saying, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah give birth at ninety?” Sarah herself laughed in Genesis 18:12 and thought, “Now that I am worn out and my husband is old, am I still to have sexual pleasure?” To this laughing husband and wife was given Isaac, whose name means “He will laugh.”

It happened to Hannah and Elkanah. While Hannah may have prayed quietly, her lips moving but her voice silent (see 1 Samuel 1:13), God still listened and gave her Samuel, which can mean, “God has heard.”

It happened to Anne and Joachim, the grandparents of Jesus according to the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James. Joachim had gone to the Temple in Jerusalem with offerings, but he was rebuked and humiliated by the High Priest because he was childless. He withdrew to the wilderness in bitterness, where he fasted and prayed, even as his wife lamented and wailed in her garden. But an angel of the Lord was sent to both, announcing that they would conceive. They would name this child Mary, which, from its Hebrew roots, can either mean “bitterness,” echoing the parents’ sorrow, or “wished-for child,” reflecting their longing.

How can we love God more than father, mother, son, or daughter? By seeing that father, mother, son, and daughter are all gifts, and they come from the one Giver, God.

But wait, we can dig deeper still…

What did Abraham, Hannah, and Anne and Joachim do with their most cherished gifts? When God asked Abraham to offer his son, Abraham did not withhold Isaac from God. After weaning Samuel, Hannah brought her son to the house of the Lord in Shiloh and dedicated him to God. And when Mary was three years old, Anne and Joachim presented their daughter at the Temple, where she grew up.

How could Abraham, Hannah, and Anne and Joachim do this? We can get a clue from another meaning of the name Samuel: “I have borrowed him from God.” We can also say that this is a sign that they loved God more than their children. But I think we should also say that they trusted the Lord so much they could entrust their children to God. You can love the Lord more than father, mother, son, and daughter when you believe that God has the best plans for your loved ones—better than any plan you could have.

Because Abraham did not withhold Isaac from God, Isaac became the son who was the first of Abraham’s many descendants, as many the stars in the sky and the sands of the seashore. Because Hannah dedicated her son to the service of God, Samuel became one of Israel’s greatest prophets. And we all know the role Mary played in our salvation.

 Jesus tells us, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” But he also says, “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” The “follow after me” is important. It tells us that whatever the Lord asks us to do, God has already done first. He is always walking ahead of us.

The Greek word translated as “worthy” is axios, from which we get the word “axis,” the fulcrum or hinge that allows a balance scale to tilt up or down. “Axis” connotes a balance, how one side is equal to—maybe even worthy of—the other side. But if you think about it, there is a great imbalance between what we can offer God and what God has already done for us. Just one case in point: While God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac, the Lord was willing to die on the cross for us.

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” There are two possible Greek words for the verb “love.” Phileo and agapao. There are instances in the Bible when the two are synonyms. But there are also instances when agapao connotes something deeper, a self-sacrificing love. For example, in John 13:34 when Jesus commands us to love one another as he loves us, the verb is agapao. In John 3:16, when we are told that God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son, the verb is also agapao. In the passage, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,” what do you think is the Greek word that is used? Phileo or agapao?

The answer: Phileo. I think we can say that the deepest love we can have for father, mother, son, and daughter is not only to love them ourselves, but to entrust them to God’s love.

Your prayer assignment this week:

Last week’s reflection (https://www.philstar.com/lifestyle/health-and-family/2026/06/21/2536783/have-you-ever-felt-you-were-losing-your-religion) got me watching the music videos of R.E.M. again. This week, I suggest two R.E.M. songs for you to contemplate.

The first is “Shiny Happy People” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYOKMUTTDdA). In the video, R.E.M. and guest singer Kate Pierson dance in front of a rotating backdrop of shiny happy scenes. The backdrop is propelled by an old man pedaling on a stationary bicycle behind the scenes. Behind the scenes. For me, this is a reminder of how God is behind all that which makes us happy and makes us shine. He is the Giver behind all the gifts. He is the reason we have father, mother, son, daughter, friend, and lover. How can we not love God more than these?

Watch the video thinking of all the people you love. Whatever their names, call them “Samuel”—borrowed from God. Can you lift them up to God as Abraham, Hannah, and Anne and Joachim did?

Continue watching the video until the end. The old man will slow down, but a young girl comes… How can you be like the young girl to God?

“Shiny Happy People” is a strange song for R.E.M. because it is unabashedly… well… happy and shiny, not at all brooding like their other songs that tapped into the angst of my generation. But if you ask me, there is another R.E.M. song that is actually more positive and buoyant. This is the second song I suggest you pray with: “It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

The last part of the long title is important: “I Feel Fine.” R.E.M. sings of earthquakes, hurricanes, wire in a fire, and a government for hire, and other things that seem out of our control. The world is changing. But “I feel fine.” Some have interpreted this as a sarcastic remark. For others, it is about indifference. But for people of faith, it can mean that despite all the trouble that we are in, we can feel fine. We are fine. We can trust in the One behind the scenes, pedaling and keeping the world rotating. He has plans for us that are better than what we can ever dream of.

Fr. Francis teaches Theology, Education and Scripture at both the Ateneo de Manila University and Loyola School of Theology. As a classroom teacher, he is first and foremost a student. As a professor, he sees himself primarily as a pastor.