28th. SUNDAY of Year
(B)
(Wisdom
7:7-11; Letter to the Hebrews 4:12-13; Gospel of St. Mark 10:17-30)
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As Jesus was
setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before Him, and asked Him,
“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered
him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God alone.”
As
you just heard, Jesus ignored the question ‘What must I do ...’ and seized upon
the manner in which the young man had addressed Him:
Why do you
call Me good? No one is good but God alone.
Why
did He do this?
Jesus
not only heard the young man’s words, He read his heart also, and was advising
him not to be so prolific in his use of the word ‘good’ whether in his speech
or, even more to the point, in his thinking.
For the young man evidently thought himself to be ‘good’:
Teacher, all of
these (commandments
cited by Jesus) I have observed from my youth.
And
Jesus, looking at him, loved him because he was good; however, that goodness
did not go deep enough. And that was
the reason why Jesus, rather than directly answering the young man sought, first
of all, to help him understand the implications of his question,
What must I
do to inherit eternal life?
Jesus
realized that the young man did not understand the true nature of eternal
life: a GOD-GIVEN-GIFT, not
something to be humanly earned by the observance of prescribed rules, nor
something to be strenuously achieved by one more religiously ambitious. Neither
did the young man truly understand what his own conscience was persistently
telling him, that all was not right despite all that he had hitherto done.
The
fact is that personal pride was secretly warping both that young man’s
understanding of the Law and his awareness of his own conscience: he wanted to do
something so uniquely his, that he could regard access to heavenly life as
part of his own patrimony, even his own personal birthright.
Yes,
dear People of God, Jesus loved that young man for what his past religious
observance had made him; but he was now at a decisive moment in his life, he could
feel it; and Jesus -- Who was never one to give merely objective information --
was probing the young man’s soul in order that He might give him spiritual guidance,
life-changing guidance, to be received as His disciple, living and
walking with Him, and learning from Him.
Why do you call Me good?
And
then He went on to adumbrate the answer, the essential answer, to the
young man’s question:
God
alone is good; you know His commandments.
The
young man was not thinking aright and so Jesus began inciting him to do
better: ‘No one is good, save God alone; OK! Why then do you ask Me about your eternal
life, about your eternal relationship with the God Who made you?
God made you, made you unique and for Himself; you know all that from the
Scriptures, why then do you seek My help? Who do you think I am?’
Thus
Jesus, while emphasizing His own humanity, provoked the young man to do some
closer thinking. It was, however, a very gentle process of correction
for, as the Gospel says:
Jesus, looking at
him, loved him.
He
loved him because he had kept the commandments of the Law from his earliest
years, and Jesus could see clearly the results of such, Israelite, obedience in
him. As a reward for that faithfulness in little things, Jesus sought to
lead this young man to greater ones, that is, to a more explicit, direct, and
personal love of the supremely Personal God He Himself knew as His own Father.
He answered him, though, in such a way that, while not revealing His own divine
Personality, He did nevertheless, respond to and acknowledge – and this time
more favourably -- the young man’s opening remark, ‘Good Master’.
‘Because
you chose to call Me “good”, let Me, therefore, give you some ‘good’ advice:
“You are lacking
in one thing. Go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will
have treasure in heaven”.’
‘And because you chose to
call Me ‘Master’, you would seem to be calling yourself, in some measure, a
disciple. Do you want to be My disciple? If so, then:
“Come, follow
Me.”’
Today
Jesus still gives His Catholic disciples such advice, such an invitation, in
the Faith of His Church – her proclamation of faith in the divinity of His
Person and the truth of His teaching – which is a framework broad enough to
embrace a multitude of believers, all called by God the Father to become disciples
of Jesus. The essence of that wonderfully mysterious walking with,
learning from, Jesus, we call the spiritual life; and the purpose of all
spiritual direction is to help those called, to find out how -- in the
framework of that One, True, Faith, and under the guidance the Holy Spirit of
Wisdom and Truth -- God’s perennial call of individual persons to Jesus, wills
to form and guide them as living members of His Mystical Body, to be ultimately
embraced by His Father as His own beloved, adopted, children in the Kingdom of
Heaven.
For
someone really seeking God, those words – offering the opportunity to
accompany, live with, and learn from Jesus – should have brought intense joy to
that young man. In fact, however, we read:
At that statement
his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Dear
People of God, that is the great danger of possessions: they afford
people immediately enjoyable consolations and satisfactions in this,
earthly, life, and once having enticed people to take a few steps along that
seemingly most ‘attractive’ highway, they can so easily poison any appreciation
of what seems, looking back, to have been the bleak and tasteless by-way of
Jesus’ Good News. Indeed, such embraced satisfactions and consolations do
make many lovers of this world unwilling ever to entertain the very thought of staking ALL, let alone
embrace the possibility of giving
ALL for the fulfilments which God offers.
The
rich young man’s wealth could not lead him to clear wrong-doing, nor could it
prevent him doing some good, but it did make it impossible for him to truly love
God, and it did prevent him from tasting the joy of living in Jesus’
company. With such a captive mind and heart, he seems to have thought
Jesus would perhaps tell him something extra, esoteric, some secret, very, very
special knowledge, which he could make his own, take delight in, and put to
diligent use, thereby assuring himself of the holiness required for eternal
life without ever having to risk his earthly comforts and securities.
Holiness,
however, is not an object we can acquire, it is not a technique we can master;
it is God’s loving and total offer of Himself – and the chosen soul, in
order to receive, and above all to respond to, such a gift – can only do so by
opening up its very own ‘self’ in return, as a like gift, to the God Who
chooses thus to relate Personally with His chosen ones.
Dear
People of God, give yourselves exuberantly to pleasures and consolations and
you will ultimately, and inevitably, taste bitterness and pain; trust too much
in riches and you will most certainly experience personal poverty when least
able to do anything about it.
Only
God is definitively good; anything, anyone else, promising salvation is a lie
and a liar, and would only enslave us so that -- because we hadn’t dared risk
what we loved wrongly and too much – we eventually find ourselves turning aside
from our true and most sublime destiny, namely, God’s offer of Personal love,
abiding fulfilment, and peace beyond all telling.
We
can say that the whole purpose of Christian teaching, the Church’s doctrine and
dogma, is to give us the Truth; and the whole function of Christian asceticism
-- of the Church’s sacraments and exercises of spiritual devotion -- is to make
us free and able to embrace such Truth. And the great truth of the
Christian faith is:
For human beings
salvation is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God
with those who believe in the One He has sent, Jesus Christ.
Only
when we calmly realize and gratefully appreciate that God is our true joy and our sure hope can we then truly commit
ourselves to Jesus, putting Him first in all the details and aspirations of our
lives:
If anyone comes to
Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. (Luke 14:26)
Whole-hearted
love for God doesn’t rule out love for others; indeed, it can help us love them
better, because the greatest danger in human love is that we soon start seeking
personal gratification instead of expressing love with and for the other.
When, however, having become aware of our own emptiness, selfishness, and
folly, we hunger and thirst for the coming of God’s Kingdom in our lives and
His love in our hearts, then we find ourselves free to love without -- some way
or other – always seeking to get something back for ourselves in return.
People
of God, pray to understand how graciously God offers us fulfilment in Jesus and
the companionship of His most Holy Spirit!
Pray, indeed, for grace to appreciate with deep gratitude the good
things of this life, but also beware of the satisfactions and
pseudo-consolations, yes, especially the self-satisfaction, they can so
easily inject into our psyche. We are here on earth to learn that
God alone is Good and Holy ... don’t sink to being satisfied with His earthly
goods; rather, knowing that the heavenly Giver is infinitely better, beyond,
and above all such earthly anticipations try, by the Spirit, to recognize the
voice of Jesus as echoing that of His heavenly Father, when He says:
Come, beloved of My Father, follow Me.
