Then Come, Follow Me August 21

“Why do you ask me about the good?... go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Matthew 19:17,21

“You have forgotten God who gave you birth.” Deuteronomy 32:18

Piety

Let us pray: God of my fathers and God of all: help me to renew all things in Christ today. Help me see your Son in all, seek your Son in all and be your Son to all. Help me, God, to perceive that you, Son and Spirit are my wealth. I thank you in joy and awe, Amen.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/082106.shtml

Perhaps the rich, young man who confronted Jesus would have been less ready to walk away in renunciation of Jesus’ answer if he had remembered Ezekiel. God gives Ezekiel a message of death and destruction – again – for God’s chosen people. Yet look, God also has Ezekiel model some remarkable behavior.

“…but do not mourn or weep or shed any tears. Groan in silence, make no lament for the dead, bind on your turban, put your sandals on your feet, do not cover your beard…”

This ignoring of ritual is an astonishingly vivid way to state that there are some tragedies for which traditional mourning is just not enough. Silent retreat into God, not weeping, is the only answer. God laments that the chosen people will again face hardship because they have abandoned Him one more time. God is grieved when we walk away.

Jesus’ answer to the young man was hyperbole: “sell what you have.” However, His promise is not: “and you will have treasure in heaven.” God wants our hearts and in return we will reap treasure.

What investor among us wouldn’t leap at a sure thing? Most of us have invested in mutual funds, stocks, or real estate in order to insure our future or our retirement. They are far from sure things! But how hard it is to invest in this promise of Jesus! The rich young man could not see the investment potential even as he thought he wanted “eternal life.”

As the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament shows us, this is not a new request. God doesn’t tell the People, through Ezekiel, that they are all bad, degenerate and unredeemable. After all, they built a temple to God which is “the stronghold of your pride, the delight of your eyes, the desire of your soul.” Good intentioned, they lost their way amidst temptations which come before them. In Deuteronomy, the people “provoked me with their ‘no-god’ and angered me with their vain idols.”

Jesus says that “doing” good is no way to earn eternal life. We are reminded that God gave us birth; we didn’t earn our life. In the Gospel, Jesus wants the heart of this young man unencumbered by wealth which is the “no god” the “desire of his soul.” And the young man cannot or will not agree.

God finds his – and our - unwillingness to be tragic.

Pope Pius X, whose feast we celebrate today might have loved this Gospel reading. The website catholic.org reads: “from St. Pius X we learn again that ‘the folly of the Cross’, simplicity of life, and humility of heart are still the highest wisdom and the indispensable conditions of a perfect Christian life, for they are the very source of all apostolic fruitfulness.”

God wants our response to be humble and loving, not calculated. Jesus’ answer to the rich young man is not an economic answer. His answer asks us to know who God is in our lives. Jesus asks that our actions and our non-actions be conscious, and driven by love, not our own ‘no-god’ agenda. Jesus wants us to give whole heartedly out of the conviction that through our giving, God gives. God’s treasure awaits us no matter how much we give of ourselves. Day to day we do not know who is a rich young man, walking away in sadness or who is an Ezekiel, modeling the presence of God. But we can, like Jesus, welcome all.

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=313


Action

Keep the rich young man and the inviting Christ in your heart today. In each moment are you “selling what you have and following” Christ? Are your actions, reactions and non-actions filled with humility or security? Simplicity or status? Who is your neighbor? Are you the neighbor?


DeColores,

Beth DeCristofaro