The Gospel of Mark, chapter 10:21-22

In a meager hovel in one of the most deprived parts in one of the world’s poorest cities lives a man with an advanced college education and years of graduate-school training. His neighbors are Indian and the city is Calcutta. He is from Poland and was raised in France. His name is Stephan Kovalski, a Catholic priest, who gave up everything to share the lives of the world’s poorest people. Here he found more heroism, more love, more sharing and ultimately more happiness than in any city of the affluent west. He has lived in this slum since 1965, quietly bearing witness to the wisdom and truth of Jesus that riches are only an impediment to happiness.

Have you ever had any of your fundamental values denied and challenged? If you have, you know how painful an experience that can be. Imagine that someone you respected and loved told you that you were wasting your time, that everything you considered important was vanity and foolishness. What would you do? Most people would be upset and, perhaps, would not be friends with such a person any longer. That kind of a put-down would be too painful to listen to. If we did listen, we would have to say that the person did not understand what real life was all about or we might have to change our whole way of living.

Today’s scripture’s is just this troubling.

When we read the story of the rich young man in chapter ten of St. Mark’s gospel, we can become so nervous that we get all tied up in our own words. The way the story was related in the early church was that he was a good man. He was very rich. Jesus invited him to give his possessions to the poor and then to follow Him. The young man refused and went away sad.

What does that story say to you and me?

Riches can be an impediment to holiness when they possess us rather than we possessing them. The rich young man, who was called to serve God in a special way, was possessed by his riches. He could not let go and free himself of the control which wealth held over him, even when he was called by God, the Lord of all.

Our time on earth is limited. Let us use this time wisely, not to be possessed and controlled by material things but to use them for the glory of God. When Jesus said that it was more difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through ‘the eye of a needle’, he was not saying it was impossible, only difficult. ‘The Eye of the Needle’ was a gate leading into Jerusalem, and camels entering through that particular gate had to be pulled and coached through on their knees.
God asks us to serve him as our Lord and Master and to be detached from riches. The rich young man reversed the process. Instead of putting God first in his life, he put material things first.
Let us put God first in our lives.

Fr. Hugh Duffy