A Reflection for Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
“Children, how hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”
They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves,
“Then who can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said,
“For men it is impossible, but not for God.
All things are possible for God.” (Mk 10:24-27)
It could be one of the most challenging—and worrying—pieces of Scripture, at least for people of a certain marginal income bracket. The story of the rich man who kept the commandments but goes away sad. Who wouldn’t? Jesus told him the only path to salvation was to sell everything he owned and to come follow him.
Don’t I already follow him… as best I can, I mean? Could he really mean it? Do I really have to do that? I’ve done what I can to rid myself of sin, but all my worldly possessions? I’m going away sad just reading this passage again.
Some Christians live this “followship” without reservation, even hesitancy. They feel the call and they plunge right in, joining Catholic Worker houses or agricultural communes or other alternative lifestyles and communities that dispense with the trappings and anxieties of wealth, its preservation and its endless accumulation. They live a kind of liberty and calmness few of us will ever know, best understood, rumor has it, by birds of the sky and lilies of the field.
Many members of the clergy and men and women religious accept and live vows of poverty, too, surely good role models for the rest of us, but are they really leaving it all up to the Lord when they can count on their communities to protect and care for them through the vagaries of life and into old age? Yes, they may have figuratively sold their worldly goods, or at least abandoned them, to go and follow Jesus, but their provinces and orders sure haven’t. Didn’t they just hit you up for a contribution to care for these people of God?
Other Christians read these words and wrap themselves up in cozy blankets of metaphors and interpretative indulgences that soothe into a spiritual and practical stupor—or worse somehow get transmogrified into the Gantryish Prosperity Gospel. No thanks. Fortunately that uniquely, almost comically American translation of Scripture does not appear to be a best seller among Catholics.
But for many of us, particularly family-builders who are caring for little humans whose needs only grow larger and more expensive as time goes by, wealth is a hedge, a source of comfort, a way to nurture our children in the now and secure them in the future. Is that so bad that skinny camels have a better shot at eternal life?
I wish I had a solid answer for you, dear reader, but this is Scripture that I find myself struggling with over and over and day by day. Don’t I give out of need? Don’t I keep an eye out for Jesus in disguise walking among us everyday? Even the Good Samaritan had to have some cash on hand to do his good works!
Maybe Jesus did not literally mean that my family and I should embrace penury on our path to everlasting life? Maybe he meant that we should simply be good custodians of our wealth, how it is acquired and what we do with it? Good stewards, right? Isn’t that a word we Christians bandy about when struggling through moral conundrums like this? Maybe as long as I don’t allow accumulation to become a self-perpetuating cycle of acquisition and hoarding, a compulsion that crowds out all my other ambitions and hopes, that drains me of mercy and compassion?
Yeah, right. Indeed I am going away sad from these sturdy rationalizations.
In today’s first reading from Sirach, we learn:
To the penitent God provides a way back,
he encourages those who are losing hope
and has chosen for them the lot of truth.
Return to him and give up sin,
pray to the LORD and make your offenses few.
After going away sad, the rich man and you and I still have a way back, impossible for us but not for God, for whom all things are possible. I only have to keep striving for it. I will remain penitent; and I will make my offenses few, but Lord, in the end it may be up to you to break my fearful, acquisitive heart and push this stubborn camel through the eye of that needle.
