Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
/Dominica XXVIII per Annum B
10 October 2021
Last weekend the Gospel selection ended with children in their humility, trust, and acceptance as an image of what is required to enter the kingdom of God. Today’s passage features a rich man, who is certainly older and less simple than a child, asking a question that touches upon the same lesson: What is needed, what must one do, to inherit eternal life? And today’s passage ends with Jesus’ remark that entering the kingdom is hard, very hard. He notes that wealth and riches make it hard to enter the kingdom. The words of the Lord amaze and astonish the disciples leading them to ask, “Then who can be saved?” Today’s passage connects well with the conclusion of last week’s passage and presents us with a critical question that should be ours about what is needed to inherit eternal life. The passage likewise should challenge us. We should not pass over these words lightly. We need to have the same interest in knowing what is needed to enter the kingdom. We need to permit the discomfort, the amazement, the astonishment to impact us if we are really listening to the words of the Lord and taking seriously the call to reform our lives for heaven.
The rich man is an example to us in two key ways for how we need to navigate this life in the hope of inheriting eternal life. The rich man provides us an example both in what he does well and in what he does not do well, that is what he still needs to do.
In a posture of petition and humility and worship, the rich man kneels before Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Notice what response Jesus does not give. He does not say, just accept me as Lord and Savior. He does not say, just be a basically good person. No, notice what Jesus highlights as a foregone conclusion, one that would be familiar to any serious Jew. The commandments. Keeping the Law of God would be a common Jewish expectation for entering the kingdom. And Jesus does not deny this. Rather, the Lord highlights such obedience. In response to the rich man, Jesus says, “You know the commandments.” And the rich man does know them. He responds that he has observed all these from his youth. So, the first lesson of the rich man for us is in what he does well. He is aware of, he is serious about, and he observes the commandments. Doing what is right and living in accord with the commandments is key to entering heaven. This is important for us to accept as a lesson because it is fashionable to dismiss a serious conforming of one’s life to the moral law. Today we often hear approaches to living a godly life that are far less rigorous and robust than the example of the rich man. Here are some examples of things we often hear: “I’m basically a nice person.” “I don’t do anything THAT bad.” “As long as your heart is in the right place.” “I haven’t murdered anybody.” We’ve all heard these generic or lowest common denominator appeals that reveal a less than robust striving for holiness. This Gospel and the example of the rich man do not let us get away with that. No, this rich man has observed all the moral commands and he has done so from his youth. An appeal to some really bad thing I have NOT done cannot be the measure of my moral life and that does not get me off the hook for a serious examination of life and a vigorous life of faith. Yet, this is the error that many people make in our modern age. It is a well-worn road to hell. The first lesson about getting to heaven is to obey and keep the commandments, to live a serious moral life.
But there is a second lesson for us in the example of the rich man. He knows the commandments and he has observed them from his youth… yet, he must know deep inside that something is lacking for he comes to the Lord and asks what more is needed. And the rich man is lacking something. Jesus says so. In context, it seems the rich man has his heart, his desire, his intentions focused on riches. His treasure is on earth and not in heaven. So, when the Lord tells the man to sell what he has and then come follow him more closely, the rich man goes away sad. This lesson in what the rich man does NOT do well is what I will phrase or call the lesson of the heart, the lesson of love. My spiritual interpretation of this passage is that the rich man, while following the commandments and being obedient, is lacking in love. The deeper or richer motivation to follow the commandments is something that has escaped him. He knows the commandments and he follows them, yet something deeper is missing. To support my interpretation that he’s lacking in love I want to highlight a unique and captivating aspect of St. Mark’s version of this passage, where St. Mark writes, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” That’s a really interesting phrase and it jumps out at me as a way St. Mark is trying to communicate something to us. Added to this unique phrase is the fact that all the commandments that Jesus lists off, are commandments traditionally understood to guide what one owes other people, they guide love of neighbor. Things like, you shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness. When Jesus says to the rich man, “You know the commandments” but then the Lord doesn’t list those commandments traditionally understood to guide what one owes to God, to guide love of God, in my mind that serves to highlight this spiritual interpretation that what the rich man is lacking is a proper motivation, a desire of the heart, a deep love of God that should be the reason for why he leads a moral life.
Just as we cannot dismiss a robust living of the moral life and obedience to God’s commands, likewise we need to look deeper. We need to notice the movements of the heart. We cannot live the commands of the moral law in only a superficial or formal way. We need to give attention to the matter of the love of God. To strive for eternal life we cannot dismiss a robust living of the moral life; but we also must reform our heart to deeply love God and his ways so that we are not lacking in what will help us inherit eternal life. It can be very easy for us to have our hearts set on what we can provide for ourselves and on what we can control. We can fall into the trap of having our heart heavy with material goods and earthly riches. But to have treasure in heaven starts with the heart and the work we must do to foster our love of God and to place ourselves before him, like the rich man, so that the Lord may look upon us and simply love us. Before we love God, He has loved us. Do we let ourselves accept the love of God? Think of that unique phrase in this passage: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” Do we simply let ourselves be in the place where Jesus can look upon us and love us? Or does an excessive focus on earthly advancement keep us from meaningful attention to a prayer life that will address the deeper matter of the heart?
We can and should pray anywhere and anytime. We can and should pray at Holy Mass, and on our own using our own words and turning to God’s word in the Bible as a rich deposit for our spiritual lives. In all of this, we have various ways to place ourselves before the Lord, like the rich man, so that the Lord may encounter us and love us. Letting ourselves be loved by God and growing in love of Him must be just as much part of our striving as keeping the commandments must be. They go together.
My experience of the value of praying and participating in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament really struck me in this regard. By participating and committing to a time in our adoration chapel we can quite literally re-enact this Gospel passage in its unique description of Jesus. When we come before the Lord in adoration, we place ourselves before him. We run up to him in the midst of our busy day. We may even kneel before him, like the rich man. We believe the Lord is present in the Blessed Sacrament. Why wouldn’t we run up to him? And in that time of prayer, in addition to whatever we might bring and whatever things we might want to pray about, we probably need the encouragement of this unique Gospel passage to simply be before the Lord, to let him look upon us and to love us. As we have heard from the Book of Wisdom today we pray that we set our hearts on the Lord and on spiritual treasure, that we may not be weighed down by an earthly focus that prevents us from noticing our need to let the Lord love us and to call us to follow him.