A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.
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Today’s gospel (Matthew 19: 16-22) relates the story of the
rich young man who comes to Jesus to ask what he must do for eternal life. Keep
the commandments, is Jesus’ fundamental message. In hearing this, the young
man is on comfortable ground for he is a faithful Jew. Well, says Jesus, in
that case: sell everything you have, give money to the poor, and follow me. Now,
the man finds himself on uncomfortable ground. He goes away sorrowful, says the
gospel, for he had great possessions.
It would be easy to read this gospel today only from a
moralist or a spiritual point of view. This young man is not a bad person; his
case is very different from the woman taken in adultery or the repentant thief
on the cross. He is a faithful Jew, a man of decency, and honour. What is his
problem, therefore, if not that he refuses to take that leap towards the next
level that Jesus calls him too: detaching himself from the things of this
world? Beyond the commandments lie the evangelical counsels – poverty,
chastity, and obedience –the following of which leaves the soul freer in its
return to God, less encumbered by this material world. The counsels are
perfected in the vows our sisters make, through which every action becomes not
only an act of morality but an act of religion, offered as an instance of
worship to honour the Blessed Trinity.
But the rich young man’s world is not open to this adventure.
He is too attached to the things of this world. What he needs is more
detachment, we could conclude. And, we may be right, in a purely material if
real sense. Detachment is certainly in play in this case. Today’s gospel
extract at Mass pulls the punch that the following verses of the gospel of
Matthew deliver with no apology:
Then Jesus said to his
disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the
kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When
the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can
be saved?”
But let us look at this young man again and ask a different
question. If we would like to bring him nearer to detachment – if we would
ourselves wish to be more detached – what question should we ask next? What
about: where does this lack of detachment come from?
After all, the man is not an evident debauchee. We cannot
know his circumstances; his status as a ‘rich young man’ is all the gospel
records. But people cling to the things of this world for different reasons.
For some, it is about the pleasure, the sheer enjoyment that things can bring. For
others, it may be something more negative: the unstated awareness of what the
loss of things would mean for them. We may or may not be happy to deny
ourselves the need for food for a time; as a pious young Jew, no doubt our rich
young man was accustomed to that practice. But how happy are we to forego or to
fast from security, from our secret clinging to the sense of safety that our
many possessions provide for us? Now, perhaps this man’s lack of detachment
begins to look a little different. We do not know specifically why he is
sorrowful, but we may wonder whether the real problem was not giving up
material possessions so much as giving up the safety and security that these
things deliver without our even realising it.
Yet, we may go a little further: can this young man be
helped? Is he always doomed to be in this condition? Does he just need to take
himself in hand and try harder, or is there something that needs the gentle
cure of divine love, driving out the toxins that our lack of love induces, and
healing the wounds and sores that he could hardly allow himself to acknowledge?
To help him, we would need to understand what lies beyond his general, widely
shared need for security that all human beings feel to some extent. Had he known
great poverty as a child? Had he lost his parents but inherited a fortune? When
he saw the poverty of those who lived in the streets near his house, did his
stomach turn like a man on a cliff who has no head for heights? What was the
wound that lay beneath the finery and security of his rich and comfortable
life? Here then is the truth. We may add coin upon coin, day by day, to our
pile of accumulated gold, but none of it can bring a cure for wounds that lie
so deep they need to be protected by building mental castles in the air,
imaginary dwellings where we can proclaim ourselves faithful observers of the
commandments, and from where we can follow after the Rabbi, asking Him questions
to show how pious we are.
So, why was this rich young man sorrowful? Beneath his spiritual
limitations, what wounds stood in need of healing? If only he had stayed
around, he might have found not only the healing he needed, but also some
consolation in the last words Jesus speaks in this chapter of Matthew:
And everyone who has left
houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields
for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.
But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.
It is not enough to follow the commandments. Our whole being stands in need of healing. And we must not turn away but knock at the door and wait for the answer of the Divine Doctor.