Mark 10:17-27 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. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother." He replied and said to him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples,
"How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, "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 human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God."
There are two things in this Gospel reading I always found a bit puzzling. First is when Jesus says “Why do you call me good, no one is good but God alone”. Is Jesus, who is also God, denying he is God here? Well, we hear Jesus actually call himself the Good Shepherd in the Gospel of John chapter 10 so is he contradicting himself? The answer, thank goodness, is no. What Jesus is doing is stating that all that is good comes from God, not from our own deeds. Jesus is trying to get this man, with many possessions to turn his focus to God and to realize that all that he has is from God. The wealthy man is failing to following the first and most important commandment Jesus reminds us of in Luke 10:27:
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind”.
Now, the second point I needed to clear up for myself is the whole "Eye of the Needle" thing. A legend from long ago, possibly as far back as the 9th century states that there was a narrow gate in Jerusalem that you could get through with your camel only after you took all your belongings off of your camel. There is no widely accepted evidence that this gate existed however. Cyril of Alexandria, a church father who lived in the late 4th and early 5th century, claimed that "camel" (kamêlos) is actually a Greek misspelling; that the word for “rope” (kamilos) was very close to that of “camel” and camel was used instead. This seems to make a lot of sense as it would now read “It is easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle”. Either way the important message to get out of this part is that if you love your abundance of things more than you love God, you are in for some big trouble on judgement day!
Long ago, a very wise priest told me that all our abundance of things, our stuff, can make us happy, but that happiness is only temporary, it will vanish when our stuff stops working and we either need to pay someone to get it working again or throw it away and replace it with newer stuff. He went on to explain that knowing Jesus is the only thing that can give us a true joy that will last forever, even beyond the grave since we can’t take our stuff with us. We need to stop working so hard for more stuff!
As St Ignatius of Loyola said: "Who could count all those who have had wealth, power, honor? But their glory, their riches were only lent to them, and they wore themselves out in preserving and increasing that which they were forced to abandon one day".
While praying more about this Gospel reflection my thoughts turned to the amounts of stuff I have in my house. Some days I feel I need a bigger house so I’ll have more room for all of my stuff. Don’t get me wrong, you aren’t going to see me on the next episode of “Hoarders, Buried Alive” but I do have much more stuff than I actually need. Perhaps, just maybe, I need to change my perspective a little and realize that I don’t need all that stuff after all and shouldn’t be so consumed with when my next purchase of stuff will be.
Our lives shouldn’t be about the quest for more stuff. Sure, stuff isn’t all bad and some of it is a necessity but our true quest needs to be about seeking God and how we can spend our eternity with Him once this temporary life is done and our stuff is left behind. This is hard to come to terms with in today’s society as the daily emails I get from Amazon “Deal of the Day” are too good to pass up, or the Friday sales fliers from my favorite store, Bass Pro Shops - I won’t even begin to discuss the number of rod and reel combinations I have - that’s off limits, I NEED all of those! Whoa, OK, sorry, back to reality. Our lives are filled with commercials telling us we need more stuff and these prices are so low we would have to be crazy not to buy this stuff that’s on sale for this week only!
Sometimes it’s good to just unplug and get away from all that advertising and from all of our stuff. If you can spend some time in adoration, look at Jesus and ask him what we must do to have eternal life, and like the rich man, Jesus will look at us, love us and help us refocus on God and away from our quest for more stuff. He will help us to remember that God will give us more than we need, and we should be seeking Jesus, not the latest phone or technological gadget. Once we realize we have enough stuff and focus our thoughts on Jesus we won’t have mere happiness, instead we will have pure joy, a joy that can’t be taken away from us when our stuff breaks. This is what the priest wanted me to realize so long ago!
As Jesus said, for human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God. His disciples were exceedingly astonished as this wasn’t what they believed then either, they believed that wealth, power and stuff was a sign of God’s favor and Jesus was once again turning the tables on their way of thinking. We should pray he can turn our tables as well.
I found this quote from Bishop Robert Barron, that if nothing else I’ve said, we should meditate and pray about: “One of the most fundamental problems in the spiritual order is that we sense within ourselves the hunger for God, but we attempt to satisfy it with some created good that is less than God.”
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