By: St. Clement of Alexandria,.(excerpt from Salvation of the Rich Man 22.13):
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The Spiritual Sense of Leaving the Family
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“Do not let this passage trouble you. Put it side by side with the
still harder saying Jesus delivered in another place in the words,
‘Whoever hates not father, and mother, and children, and his own life
besides, cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14:26 ). Note that the God of
peace, who exhorts us to love our enemies, does not arbitrarily
require us literally to hate or abandon those dearest to us. But if we
are to love our enemies, it must be in accordance with right reason
that, by analogy we should also love our nearest relatives… But
insofar as one’s father, or son, or brother, becomes for you a
hindrance to faith or an impediment to godly life, one should then not
collude with that temptation. Attend to the spiritual, rather than the
fleshly, meaning of the command.”