From Faith and Prejudice and Other Unpublished Sermons
by Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O.

In the Old Testament the Levites are praised because they knew not father or mother, when duty to God came in the way. "Who said to his father and to his mother, I know you not, and to his brothers, I am ignorant of you" (Deut. 33). "They knew not their children." If such was the conduct of the sacerdotal tribe under the Law, well did it become the great and one Priest of the New Covenant to give a pattern of that virtue which was found and rewarded in Levi. He too Himself has said, "He who loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." And He tells us that "every one who hath left home or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for His name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life" (Matt. 19). It became then Him who gave the precept to set the example, and as He told his followers to leave all they had for the Kingdom's sake, in His own Person to do all that He could, to leave all He had, to leave His home and His Mother, when He had to preach the Gospel.