Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

Then Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” … Then Peter began to say to Him, “See, we have left all and followed You.” So Jesus answered and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” (Mk 10:22, 28–31)

Therefore on hearing those words, the blessed Peter, the elect, the chosen one,the first of the disciples, for whom alone and Himself the Savior paid tribute, quickly seized and comprehended the saying. And what does he say? “See, we have left all and followed You.” Now if by all he means his own property, he boasts of leaving four oboli perhaps in all, and forgets to show the kingdom of heaven to be their recompense. But if, casting away what we were now speaking of, the old mental possessions and soul diseases, they follow in the Master’s footsteps, this now joins them to those who are to be enrolled in the heavens. For it is thus that one truly follows the Savior, by aiming at sinlessness and at His perfection, and adorning and composing the soul before it as a mirror, and arranging everything in all respects similarly.

But let neither this trouble you, nor the still harder saying delivered in another place in the words, “Whoever hates not father, and mother, and children, and his own life besides, cannot be My disciple.” For the God of peace, who also exhorts to love enemies, does not introduce hatred and dissolution from those that are dearest. But if we are to love our enemies, it is in accordance with right reason that, ascending from them, we should love also those nearest in kindred; or if we are to hate our blood-relations, deduction teaches us that much more are we to spurn from us our enemies: so that the reasonings would be shown to cancel one another. But they do not cancel each other, nor are they near doing so. For from the same feeling and disposition, and on the ground of the same rule, one loving his enemy may hate his father, inasmuch as he neither takes vengeance on an enemy, nor reverences a father more than Christ. For by the one word he destroys hatred and injury, and by the other excessive deference towards one’s relations, if it is detrimental to salvation. If then one’s father, or son, or brother, be godless, and become a hindrance to faith and an impediment to the higher life, let him not be friends or agree with him, but on account of the spiritual enmity, let him dissolve the fleshly relationship.

Clement of Alexandria, Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? 21–22