Tuesday 21 August
Matthew 19:23-30 • St Pius X (Memorial)
The rich young man has gone away sad, unable to find it in himself to overcome his attachment to wealth, and not yet mature enough to reach out to God for the necessary strength. He provides Jesus with a further teaching point.
Anyone remotely self-aware would be profoundly disturbed by the radical message of today’s Gospel. In our world, where market forces determine so much, people are bought and sold like so many goods. There is a strong media-driven incitement to earn and to spend. Although spending is essentially neutral and amoral, wealth does pose a spiritual threat to us because, directly or indirectly, it is often acquired by underhand means. Money can separate us from God and from others and can drive us on to more exploitation, as thirst for wealth normally intensifies rather than abates over time.
Using the highly pictorial example of the camel and the eye of a needle – thought by St Anselm to refer to a particular gate in Jerusalem known as ‘The Needle’s Eye’ where camels, first relieved of their heavy loads, had literally to squeeze through on their knees – Jesus follows his stern warning with a message of hope: ‘with God all things are possible’ (v. 26). The teaching is clear. If we are too self-sufficient financially, closeness to God is difficult – but not unrealizable.
Jesus was a Jew. He had no reason to condemn wealth unconditionally, for many holy people in the Hebrew Scriptures were rewarded by God with affluence: Abraham, Jacob, David, Hezekiah. Also, the acquisition of wealth was often thought to denote wisdom, diligence and temperance. Monetary wealth, though, was seen as being a secondary good, wisdom taking first place (1 Kgs. 3:11-14), and everything being pure gift from God. Gratitude to God was expected, along with justice in the procurement of goods.
Jesus shows how foolish it is to confuse ends and means. Financial wealth can bring spiritual and emotional poverty. The truly rich person knows his or her dependence on God and interdependence with others, like the ‘poor in spirit’ of the beatitudes. We can take to heart the profound words of Martin Luther King in Strength to Love: ‘All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.’
Ezekiel 28:1-10 • Deuteronomy 32:26-28, 30, 35-36
Matthew 19:23-30
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