Jesus knew He was God and said so: He was accused of being God at his trial. Jesus revealed his divinity by miracles, and by His Resurrection, but he never says to the crowds, “Hey, everyone, I’m God.”
In today’s Gospel, he goes undercover.
To illustrate:
In the TV show, Undercover Boss, a CEO will go undercover as a low-level manager in his own company. He’ll wear a disguise to see what real life is like in his company.
So, an employee will say to the disguised CEO, “Hey, Mr. Manager, you are the greatest boss in this company.” And the manager says, “Oh, I’m not the greatest boss. The CEO is.” 1
So when Jesus says, “No one is good but God alone,” he is not rejecting His divinity, as Hilary of Poitiers, and John of Damascus pointed out in 4th century, rather he is undercover. 2
“No one is good but God alone” does apply to Jesus, but he is pointing to the Father, who is alone is the first principle of life in the Most Holy Trinity; thus, the Catechism says, in paragraph 246: “Everything that belongs to the Father,…[and] the Son who is eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born . . .” In this sense, the Father can be said to be greater than the Son relationally, while they are absolutely equal in their essence as God.
The principle of “No one is good but God alone” applies to many things:
1. You and me, our countries, children, marriages, parishes, are not perfect, only God is, so we are free to love imperfect things aware that they can bring us into God’s perfect Goodness for our sanctification. 3
We cannot wait for things to be totally perfect to respond to any vocation to fall in love with it.
E.g., Seven seminarians took a major step in their priestly formation when they were formally admitted to candidacy for Holy Orders in a Mass at St. Ambrose Church in Annandale Aug. 10, 2024. One of the aspirants is Conner Miles Kleb, who said:
“I’m feeling really at peace with Our Lord at the moment, and his call for my life,” said Kleb. “Surrender has been the name of the game since I entered. We try to run a lot when we’re discerning things, especially when he’s calling you to something difficult. But when you actually surrender is when your life starts to get better and better.”4
Similarly, the actress Dolores Hart stunned Hollywood in 1963 when, after ten highly successful feature films, she chose to enter a contemplative monastery as a religious sister. “How could I throw away a promising acting career for the monastic life of a cloistered nun?
I left the world I knew in order to reenter it on a more profound level. Many people don't understand the difference between a vocation and your own idea about something. A vocation is a call—one you don't necessarily want. The only thing I ever wanted to be was an actress. But I was called by God.” 5
As Burkeman wrote, “. . . don’t worry about burning bridges: irreversible decisions tend to be more satisfying, because now there’s only one direction to travel– forward into whatever choice you made.” 6
Notice that it is not until the young man’s negative response to his vocation when “his face fell” that we are formally told the man was rich.
Jesus said, “you shall not defraud,” instead of the normal phrasing of the Tenth Commandment, “Do not covet.” This emphasis on defrauding may mean that the young man may have not kept this commandment so perfectly because the Greek translation implies that he was a large landowner which pretty much meant the exploitation of the peasantry.
In Mark’s gospel, the stinging sarcasm of the camel and the needle is perhaps more recognizable in Frederick Buechner’s contemporary paraphrase: for wealthy North Americans it is harder to enter the kingdom “than for Nelson Rockefeller to get through the night deposit slot of the First National City Bank!” 7
Spiritual poverty means to detach from material things to the same extent as those called to religious poverty as a monk. The only difference is that one calling is both interior and exterior, and the other calling is only interior. But it must be just as radical.
The principle of “No one is good but God alone” also applies relying on the Goodness of God for help.
We cannot conquer lust or any of the other Seven Deadly Sins on our own. As St. John of Climacus makes clear, we will have no chance of winning this battle if we try to rely on our own strength. Rather, he teaches, the first step we must take and never step away from is to admit that we cannot do it alone and to ask God to strengthen us with supernatural spiritual weaponry.
Lastly, the principle of “No one is good but God alone” also applies to seeing what we are lacking in our own goodness.
You are lacking in one thing, Jesus says. This sort of instantaneous, supernatural character analysis is frequently attributed to holy people. Like the Jewish Hasidic masters, which stress the holy person’s penetrating eyes, supernatural ability to uncover secrets, and extraordinary power to make accurate and effective spiritual diagnoses and prescriptions. [Anchor Bible].
“No one is good but God alone.” One should seek wisdom for its own sake, and all other goods will flow from it.
In our First Reading we hear it’s because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.
Philo frequently speaks of unsleeping eyes of the mind, “the unsleeping eyes of justice, the assessor of God.” Your uncover guardian angel at your side.” [Anchor Bible]
1. Trent Horn, Matt Nelson, The Hard Sayings of Jesus (with the Word on Fire Institute), Catholic Anwsers, Counsel of Trent 8/25/2020
2. Trinitate or On the Trinity, Book IX CCEL Footnote 984
3. Adapted using Richard Rohr, Belongs, Holding the Paradox, The Center for Action and Contemplation, July 9, 2023
4. Arlington Catholic Herald, Seminarians take major step on the path to the priesthood, by Jim Hale, 8/12/24
5. Mother Prioress Dolores Hart in the Preface to The Ear of the Heart
6. Austin Kleon, blog, Will this enlarge me or diminish me? September 10, 2020
7. The Eye of the Needle on October 14, 2018, By RadicalDiscipleship In Subverting Empire, Theological Animation, 30 years in and Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (1988), radicaldiscipleship.net
