In search of healing

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.