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By
Father Timothy P. Schehr
Twenty-eighth
Sunday in Ordinary Time, Wisdom 7:7-11; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30
One
sign of progress is learning to ask the right questions. In the readings
for this Sunday, we hear about people who show progress in the journey of
faith by asking the right things of God.
In
the Gospel, someone asks Jesus what to do to inherit eternal life? This is
just the right question to ask of Jesus. It shows that the one who asked
it was truly listening to what Jesus had to say.
Things
look very good for the man at first. When Jesus refers to the
commandments, the man is able to say he has kept them all from the time he
was little. Jesus looks at him and sees all the good in him. We might then
expect Jesus to announce that there is nothing more for the man to do. But
Jesus sees one attachment in the man that might interfere with his
progress. He asks the man to let go of his possessions and follow Him. We
know this is difficult for the man to do because he does not respond right
away. Instead, he just walks away, sad because he would have to let go of
his many possessions.
Did
he ever exchange his earthly treasure for a heavenly one? Was he sad
because he knew how hard it would be for him to say goodbye to his things?
Or was he sad because Jesus had even asked him to do what He knew would be
impossible. We will never know. But thinking about it will help us make
progress in our own journeys of faith.
Possessions
really can get in the way. They provide us with a certain sense of
security. Can we really let them go and seek security in God? The image of
the camel passing through the eye of a needle is just the right one for
this lesson. Camels served as the transports of the day. People would see
camels loaded with baggage making their way along the caravan routes of
antiquity. So Jesus chooses just the right image to represent our
attachment to the baggage in our lives.
Peter
immediately points out to Jesus that he and the others have given up
everything to follow Him. And Jesus assures Peter that he has not made a
mistake. God will fill their lives with so much more because they have
emptied their lives to pursue spiritual goods. Of course, Peter and the
others do not yet understand all of what they said. Their detachment from
the world would involve much more than material things. In time, they
would go so far as to surrender their lives for the Gospel. But, God will
provide the grace for that, too, when the time comes.
In
the first reading, we hear wise King Solomon asking God for the right
things. Solomon prays for the spirit of wisdom. He wants that gift from
God that enables him to put everything in proper perspective. If he can
learn to see the world from God's viewpoint, then everything else will
fall into place, and he will rule his kingdom with perfect wisdom.
Of
course, the Solomon of history never got this far in the faith journey. He
did have a dream about asking God for wisdom. But, after he woke up from
that dream, he never made it reality. In the Book of Wisdom, the ideal
Solomon does what the Solomon of history did not.
(Father
Schehr is a member of the faculty at the Athenaeum of Ohio in Cincinnati.)
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