Nothing matters beyond the capacity to grow into love

I recently learned about a unique bond between a mother and daughter from Cascade, Montana. Whenever the child would run into some sort of deep crisis, hurt feeling, emotional bruise or perhaps even despair she would seek out her mother’s presence. No words needed to be exchanged between the two. The mother knew her daughter’s woes and inability to grapple with them better than her child understood for herself. The daughter explains this frequent experience over the years, “All she needed to do was look at me, and I knew she understood.” Their relationship points to a mixture of vulnerability, love and wisdom similar to what is found in this Sunday’s readings.

A common theme in Scripture is the promise that all things will eventually come to light. What is misunderstood today will be revealed with time. The word of God has a way of exposing the true desires of the heart and challenging one’s settled imagination of how things ought to be. The second reading attempts to spell this out: “Indeed the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating between soul and spirit, joints and marrow” (Heb 4:12). Is there any space between joints and marrow? Probably not much. But it reflects the sentiment of the mother in Cascade whose insight could penetrate her daughter’s thoughts. In Hebrews, the word of God is Jesus, the Logos, who cuts through those spaces within us that we sometimes conceal even from ourselves. “No creature is concealed from him,” says the author, “everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account” (Heb 4:13). 

Getting to the core of things can help one arrive at a place of freedom and healing, which happens to be the good news shared in this Sunday’s Gospel. 

The rich man had everything going for him, including wealth, fear of the Lord and a strong desire for spiritual growth. This is why he approached Jesus as a wisdom figure, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mk 10:17). His question was sincere, revealed through his bodily posture as he knelt down before his teacher. Perhaps Jesus will help him become even better in the eyes of God. None of the biblical commands that Jesus reveals satisfies the rich man, unfortunately. “Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth” (Mk 10:20). 

What happens next, penetrates to the man’s core. A loving gaze by Jesus is followed by a request that he give up all his property for the benefit of the poor and follow him afterwards. This was literally the spiritual growth the man needed, but not the one he wanted. “His face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions” (Mk 10:22). The simplicity of the story does not mask the profundity of its revelation: the man is spiritually stuck and he knows it. His exposed lack of freedom stings.

Jesus offers an opportunity for the man to step into a greater sense of freedom, perhaps for the first time since his youth. His reality may be compared to what Jesus, his teacher, had been saying about children all along. As the Sunday Gospel proclaimed a week ago, “Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it” (Mk 10:15). Children have no standing, have no possessions, and as a result have the freedom to laugh and move about without any major responsibility that prevents their spirit from further growth. The lesson for the rich man, as he walked away sad, is one that he might learn with time. The only thing that matters to a child is to be loved and to live into that truth. Hopefully, our own experience will align with the rich man’s memory of that time when, for a brief moment, he was held with love: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (Mk 10:21).