In many ways we cannot apply the realities of our Gospel reading to our everyday lives. To begin with, this unique and unrepeatable event, Jesus going up to His passion in Jerusalem. The majority of us cannot simply drop everything and follow Christ. Those who have families and responsibilities already have a vocation and a mission. There may be some of us, though, that the Lord is calling to follow Him more intensly in the religious life of the priesthood. The words of Jesus to His would-be followers in today’s Gospel can be read as a call to follow Him in a life of prayer, sacrifice and mission. Some of us may be called to leave everything for the sake of spreading the good news of the kingdom. One thing we are called to do, however, is to follow Jesus to Jerusalem. Not the earthly Jerusalem, but the heavenly Jerusalem where He has gone before us as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is the gate through which have entered Abraham, Moses, all the prophets and the saints. We can do this today as we come together in the celebration of the Mass, where Jesus himself comes to feed us, so that we can accompeny Him on the way to our heavenly home.