Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Finishing What We Start: The Daily Cost of Discipleship
On this 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, the words of Jesus challenge us to reflect seriously on what it truly means to follow Him. In today’s Gospel from Luke, Jesus tells the crowds, ‘Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.’ And He goes on to ask: ‘Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?’
Discipleship is more than a feeling. It’s a decision — a costly, daily commitment that requires endurance, sacrifice, and planning. Jesus is not calling us to be casual admirers. He is calling us to be deliberate, wholehearted followers.
Each week, many of us come to church with good intentions. We stand before God truly desiring transformation. We pray for renewal. We receive Jesus in the Eucharist and perhaps even whisper to Him in our hearts, ‘Lord, I want to give you my life.’
But then, what happens?
Once Mass ends and we return to our routines — the errands, the busyness, the distractions — that desire to follow Christ can fade. The emotion of the moment passes, and by Monday morning, the last thing on our minds is the experience we had at church just 24 hours earlier. We fall right back into old habits, and church becomes something we ‘did’ on Sunday rather than something we ‘carry’ all week long.
When that happens, we become like the builder in today’s Gospel who laid a foundation, but didn’t finish the tower — or like the infamous I-4 Eyesore so many of us see when driving through Altamonte Springs. A massive steel and concrete structure meant to be a grand building, it instead stands incomplete year after year. A monument to good intentions, it became a symbol of what happens when we start something but don’t finish.
Jesus uses that same imagery: don’t start to build unless you’re ready to finish. In the spiritual life, incomplete towers don’t just affect our own souls — they become signs to others. People will look at our half-lived faith and say, ‘There’s someone who started to follow Christ but never followed through.’
St. Augustine once said, ‘God who created you without you, will not save you without you.’ What powerful truth. God’s grace is always working and reaching out to us, but we must cooperate with it. Following Jesus requires not just emotion, but intention; not just inspiration, but daily effort. So how do we live that out?
Let me offer a practical, realistic place to begin: start each day — every morning — with one simple moment of prayer. Before you reach for your phone, before breakfast, before the news or email, pause and say from your heart, ‘Lord, help me to follow you today. Show me where I can love more, trust more, and serve more.’ It doesn’t have to be long. Just intentional.
This habit plants a spiritual foundation each morning that aligns our heart with God. That small act of opening our day to Christ changes how we walk through it. It reconnects our Sunday worship with our Monday lives. The more consistent we are in this, the stronger the spiritual tower we build — not one of concrete and steel, but of grace, virtue, and fidelity.
So today, let us refuse to be half-built disciples. Let us count the cost and persevere in the work. Let’s not settle for inspiration that fades — let’s choose intentional discipleship that endures. May our lives not be spiritual eyesores, but temples of the Holy Spirit, beautiful and complete, built day by day through grace and commitment.y the cross — but do so with hope, knowing the Master Builder walks every step with you.