Good morning, brothers and sisters.
We’ve just heard the memorable story of the Rich Young Man, and camel and the eye of a needle. Perhaps we’ve heard this story dozens of times, and perhaps we’ve become a bit immune to the punch behind Jesus’ words. Maybe we’re thinking: ‘Yes, Jesus calls this particular rich young man to leave everything, and yes He’s rarely asked people like St Francis of Assisi… but not most people – not me.’ Maybe we think: ‘yes, it’s hard for a rich person to enter Heaven, but I’m not rich: I don’t have a private jet, I’m no Elon Musk.’
But Jesus’ words today are meant for all of us, not just the St Francises or the Elon Musks. The story should have punch for all of us. In fact, St John Paul II used this story as the backbone for one of his greatest encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor. In many ways, this story is an icon of the Christian life. It describes the three steps we all must take to move from sinners to saints.
In the first step: the rich young man comes running up to Jesus, kneels down, and asks: "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
We should commend the Rich young man – he’s doing several things right here. He is asking the most important question of all: how do I get to Heaven? And he is rightly going to Jesus, the Source of Truth, for the answer to that question. And he is not just walking and stopping… he is running and then kneeling down – he is putting himself enthusiastically and humbly at the foot of Christ.
In order to become a saint, we first need to acknowledge the fundamentals: Heaven and Hell exist. The main purpose of life is trying to get to Heaven. Jesus is the source of truth and grace who opens the door to Heaven for each of us, so we can enter his wedding feast. … Heaven is living in the loving and joyful presence of Jesus. How many of our brethren haven’t made it to step one? So many people today are lost, asking the wrong questions: like how can I be rich or popular? Many folks – myself included- get hung up chasing after one of the lesser goods: like wealth, power, pleasure, and honor. But all the wealth, power, pleasure, or worldly honors in the world will never fully satisfy us. Thus, many people are tormented by questions of ‘what’s the meaning of life? Why am I here?’. As Catholics, we’re grateful to have this first step covered, with a clear answer straight from the Catechism: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” Heaven is our clear goal. The more we can set our sights on Heaven, on Jesus, the happier we will be.
The Rich young man seems to get it. He knows riches alone will not make him happy. He comes to Jesus to ask the right question. He seems to be talking the talk.
Second, he also seems to be walking the walk. In answer to his question, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’, Jesus responds with a list of commandments – basically numbers 4 through 10 of the Ten Commandments. Honor your father and mother, don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, etc. The rich man responds earnestly, ‘all these I have observed from my youth.’ He’s quite commendable.
Not only has he made it past step 1: to acknowledge that Heaven and God are priorities.. he’s also passed step 2 - to avoid major sin. What sort of sin?
I doubt too many of us have murdered or mugged anyone recently, but there are more subtle sins… stealing by cheating on tax returns or adultery via pornography or killing via the morning after pill. All of us are sinners – this is our wounded nature – but we know that Christ can always heal us. I always remember that the saints used the Sacrament of Reconciliation (or Confession) on a regular basis.
So if you’ve made it past step 1, perhaps this is your step 2: go to Confession if it’s been a while. Many of the saints went every week, but once every 1-2 months is a great place to start.
Step 3 is that Jesus looks at this virtuous young man with love, and invites him into deeper communion… ‘follow me’… but to do this, the rich young man must give up the worldly thing that seems to define him: his riches.
What follows is one of the saddest moments in all of Scripture: the up-till-then enthusiastic young man drops his head and goes away sad.
The young man was willing to talk the talk and walk the walk… but he was not willing to cut the cut. He was too attached to his wealth.
Brothers and sisters, we are all this rich young man. First of all, nearly all of us living in the USA today are wealthy by 1st century Judean standards: we have comfortable beds and electricity and heating and running water and full fridges and colorful wardrobes. Most of us would qualify as princes in Jesus’ time. Most of us have excess. So I think it’s a mistake to brush off the warning about the camel and the eye of the needle as some sort of rabbinic hyperbole. Jesus doesn’t say: ‘don’t worry, it’s only if you’re really rich or really greedy that your wealth could keep you from entering Heaven.’ He is sounding an alarm, and woe to the preacher who silences an alarm Jesus wants us to hear. Yes, of course he’s not saying that wealthy people can’t go to Heaven.
But the point is: When we die, we will need to give an account for all the wealth, all the gifts we’ve been given. Are we using our gifts for others, or selfishly?
Ok, so you have a nice, big house? Do you share it with others, hosting big family gatherings or Bible studies? You have a guest room? Could you invite Haitian refugees to stay there for a while? (This is a real question – if you have extra space, or willing to have refugees staying in your home when you’re next on vacation - speak with me after Mass – I know a good group that helps to house refugees). What we have is not our own: we are stewards who must give the Master a final accounting for all the gifts he gave us.
St Basil the Great used to say ‘the unused coat in your closet belongs to the one who needs it, the extra shoes rotting in your chest belong to the poor.’ So perhaps God is calling all of us to donate some of our excess – not just the old clothes or shoes that don’t fit us any more, but even the clothes that we like.
If the idea of donating several pieces of your wardrobe makes you squirm a bit, then maybe that’s precisely what you need to do. Or perhaps it’s not clothes but simply money. We’re all supposed to ‘tithe’, and that word ‘tithe’ means ‘tenth’ … but I suspect many of us are NOT giving 10% of our income on charities and the Church. As I prepped this homily, my wife and I talked and realized that we needed to increase our weekly online giving donation to our parish. Think about it with your family, think about how much you’re contributing to charities.
Perhaps it’s not clothes or money… what else are you attached to? What are you afraid to cut?
Perhaps you’re attached to an addiction: food, alcohol, gambling, video games, pornography. Perhaps it’s simply the snooze button or long hot showers. Most of our attachments are in search of one of the 4 lesser goods: wealth, power, pleasure, honor. I’ll confess for me that my big addiction is getting distracted on my smartphone. How many hours have I wasted on this thing: getting sucked into watching reels or videos that maybe weren’t bad in themselves, but distracted me from more important duties, like prayer…Ok, so what am I going to do about it? Certainly I shouldn’t just put my head down and walk away sad, thinking ‘I can’t possibly change this, it’s been going on too long, it’s who I am.’ Don’t walk away sad.
For one, you can harness the power of behavioral science to your benefit. As Catholics, we support all truth, since God is the source of all truth. So we can use research-proven strategies to make change.
If it’s your smartphone, you can set time limits on social media or youtube, after which your phone will prompt you to stop. You can delete your social media apps altogether. You can put up kid filters to block adult content. You can set your screen to ‘grayscale’ to remove all the color and make it less appealing. If it’s your computer screen, you tape up a Post-it as a reminder. You can set a timer or alert on your phone so you don’t spend more time than you planned to. Whether you’re talking about smartphones or gambling or porn or other addictions, you’re working against billion-dollar industries, which have done lots of research to keep us addicted. It’s not easy, and -of course- prayer is key. Just like in the 12 steps, the early steps are acknowledging that this is a problem in our life and that we can’t do it on our own. We need grace. Having an accountability partner is excellent, especially for more private addictions like gambling or pornography. Check in with someone daily.
And if you fall off the bandwagon, get back up and go to confession.
So let’s summarize: the Rich Young Man shows us that the first step is talk the talk: acknowledge that being a saint in Heaven is our goal. The second step is walk the walk: follow the commandments, avoid sin and go to Confession when we fall. And the third step is cut the cut: detach yourself from whatever is holding yourself back from Christ, so you can follow him more closely.
Maybe you’re in your pew thinking: deacon, that sounds nice, but honestly I’m going through a lot right now. I’m dealing with this terrible thing that’s happened: I lost my job or my boyfriend or my parent. I was just diagnosed with a chronic disease. Ok, well, then let that be your ‘cutting the cut’ – if you’ve suffered a loss, or you’re going through a difficult time – then it’s time to offer that up to Christ as your sacrifice, as your giving away your riches to follow him. Suffering might be God’s way of forcing you to detach yourself from something you didn ’t want to give up.
God meets each of us where we are: for the Rich Young Man, Jesus saw that he was ready for Step #3. Maybe we’re still at #1, not sure in our head or heart that we should go ‘all in’ for Heaven. Or maybe we’re still at #2, stuck in a habitual sin.
Wherever we are, we should never walk away from Christ – because that is to walk away from happiness. That’s to walk away sad.
What ever happened to the rich young man anyway? Did he live the rest of his days regretting his decision to cling to his wealth, not to join the Savior of the World?
I’d like to believe that he repented and came back. One of my Scripture teachers hypothesized that the rich young man could be the same young man in the Garden of Gethsemane, who was clothed in only a linen cloth and fled when the soldiers tried to seize him. If so, this means the young man eventually gave up everything – even his nice clothes – to follow Jesus. But even then he clung to bodily safety, ran away rather than follow Jesus to Calvary. But then on Easter Sunday, we find a young man clothed in a white robe sitting near the tomb – perhaps it’s the same young man, who through the grace of God, came back yet again. If we stick to Christ, we can make it - even if we fall along the way.
"For human beings it might seem impossible, but not for God.
All things are possible for God."
Amen. [Note: I gladly acknowledge I have drawn from an old homily from one of my heroes, Bishop Barron (who was then Fr Robert Barron), for this homily. Also, I benefited from reading from Kreeft's Food for the Soul.]
