ording to the due mode. But it is not the due mode that
man should tend to worship his father rather than God, but, as
Ambrose says on Luke 12:52, "the piety of divine religion takes
precedence of the claims of kindred."

Accordingly, if the worship of one's parents take one away from the
worship of God it would no longer be an act of piety to pay worship
to one's parents to the prejudice of God. Hence Jerome says (Ep. ad
Heliod.): "Though thou trample upon thy father, though thou spurn thy
mother, turn not aside, but with dry eyes hasten to the standard of
the cross; it is the highest degree of piety to be cruel in this
matter." Therefore in such a case the duties of piety towards one's
parents should be omitted for the sake of the worship religion gives
to God. If, however, by paying the services due to our parents, we
are not withdrawn from the service of God, then will it be an act of
piety, and there will be no need to set piety aside for the sake of
religion.

Reply Obj. 1: Gregory expounding this saying of our Lord says (Hom.
xxxvii in Ev.) that "when we find our parents to be a hindrance in
our way to God, we must ignore them by hating and fleeing from them."
For if our parents incite us to sin, and withdraw us from the service
of God, we must, as regards this point, abandon and hate them. It is
in this sense that the Levites are said to have not known their
kindred, because they obeyed the Lord's command, and spared not the
idolaters (Ex. 32). James and John are praised for leaving their
parents and following our Lord, not that their father incited them to
evil, but because they deemed it possible for him to find another
means of livelihood, if they followed Christ.

Reply Obj. 2: Our Lord forbade the disciple to bury his father
because, according to Chrysostom (Hom. xxviii in Matth.), "Our Lord
by so doing saved him from many evils, such as the sorrows and
worries and other things that one anticipates under these
circumstances. For after the burial the will had to be read, the
estate had to be divided, and so forth: but chiefly, because there
were others who could see to the funeral." Or, according to Cyril's
commentary on Luke 9, "this disciple's request was, not that he might
bury a dead father, but that he might support a yet living father in
the latter's old age, until at length he should bury him. This is
what Our Lord did not grant, because there were others, bound by the
duties of kindred, to take c