Beauty And Poverty? Series

Homily for Monday in 8th week

Sir 17:20-24; Mk 10:17-27

In the ancient world, a world without weapons of mass destruction, the safest place to be when the Egyptians or Assyrians were roaming the Levant with their scythed chariots was a walled city. But every city has to have gates, so the gate was both the most vulnerable and the most well-protected part of the city wall. To gain entrance to the city, an invading army had to wend its way through a labyrinth of two or more right angles. This place of danger was called “the eye of the needle.” A camel would have the dickens of a time getting through, even in times of peace.

Wealth and riches tend to disable us from our pursuit of ultimate goodness, beauty and truth because they make it really easy to buy proximate goodness, beauty and truth. And too much of any of that can become a false god that keeps us from true devotion to the True God, the real foundation of our life.

The fundamental commandment has two sides: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The rich young man here is every man, every woman. You and me. Jesus does not downplay the ten commandments. Indeed, in other places he made them stricter than Moses. We cannot love God if we don’t love our neighbor. And we cannot love our neighbor if we don’t keep the neighborly commandments–respecting our neighbor’s person, property, life, right to the truth, and especially respect those who gave us life.

For years we have comforted ourselves in our wealth by thinking that this last counsel of Christ is for priests and nuns and Dorothy Day. Dedicating ourselves to the kingdom, to the poor by selling everything except the bare necessities seemed to be going way too far. It’s not too far for Jesus, and it’s not too far for the saints. Let me recommend a book by Thomas Dubay called Blessed Are the Poor. He makes a strong case for the universality of this teaching. We enter this world with nothing; we take nothing from it. In between those two dates, he challenges us to make do with as little as we can–and dedicate everything else to God’s kingdom. As we enter Lent, perhaps the Holy Spirit is calling each of us to consider just how much stuff we really need to be happy.