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Matthew 8:18-20
New Catholic Bible
Matthew 8:18-20
New Catholic Bible
18 The Cost of Following Jesus.[a] When Jesus saw the great crowds around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. 19 A scribe approached him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 Jesus told him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man[b] has nowhere to lay his head.”
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- Matthew 8:18 Jesus has subordinated family ties to the needs of his mission of salvation and requires the same sacrifice of those called to share that mission, while other members of the family can perform the deeds of filial piety. These are “dead” only in the sense that they have not received the same call to separate themselves from family responsibility in order to preach the Gospel of the kingdom. They can nonetheless be his disciples in another sense.
Hence, following Jesus means Christians should be ready to make whatever sacrifice he asks of them. In the final analysis, they are followers of Christ, people who believe in him. They received faith in Christ at Baptism and are bound to serve him. By recourse to frequent prayer and true friendship with the Lord, they should strive to discover what Jesus asks of them in their service of him. - Matthew 8:20 Son of Man: the most common and enigmatic title of Christ used in the Gospels (81 times) and in Acts 7:56—frequently by Christ himself. It was well suited to his purpose of both veiling and revealing his person and mission. On the one hand, it meant simply “man” (see Ezek 2:1) and emphasized the lowliness of the human condition (Mt 8:20; 11:19; 20:28), especially in Christ’s humiliation and death (Mt 17:22). On the other hand, it expressed the triumph of Christ’s Resurrection (Mt 17:9), his return to glory (Mt 24:30; Dan 7:13), and his Second Coming as judge of the world (Mt 25:31).
Christ made use of this title at his trial before the Sanhedrin (Mt 26:64) when he prophesied that he would be vindicated and be seated in future glory at the right hand of God not merely as man but as Lord (see Dan 7:13; Mk 14:62).
This title was employed by Jewish apocalyptic literature (1 Enoch, 2 Ezra, 2 Baruch) to describe a unique religious personage endowed with extraordinary spiritual power who would receive the kingdom from God at the end of the ages. Early Christians revered this title as a reminder of Christ’s twofold destiny of humiliation and joy, which was also their own (Mt 24:30f).
