The Danger of Riches

I have been a priest for a little over six years, and thus far, I have been blessed to minister quite a bit to young people. I’ve been the pastor here at St. Thomas Aquinas for just over three years, and before that, I was chaplain and administrator at a junior high school in Fort Smith. If there is one thing about young people that my experiences with them have taught me it’s that they value, above all else, authenticity. They love a "straight shooter" – someone who tells it like it is, who lays his cards openly on the table, because it’s honesty that they love best and deceit that they hate most. Even if they disagree with you, they appreciate authenticity. 

In today’s Gospel, a rich man approaches Jesus with an honest question. The Gospel according to Mark that we heard doesn’t mention it, but we know from the other Gospels that this rich man is also a young man. Perhaps he is used to people trying to beguile him because of his youth, or flatter him because of his money. He sees in Jesus a straight shooter, and so he rushes up to him to ask him the question that dominates his thinking: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s very much the question of a young person – direct, sincere, and focused on what he has to do to get what he wants. Anyone who has worked with young people recognizes such eager intensity.

Christ and the Rich Young Ruler (1889) by Heinrich Hofmann

How does Jesus respond? Gently. He reminds him of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments – specifically those that relate to how we are to treat others: to not kill; to not commit adultery; to not steal, bear false witness, or defraud; to honor father and mother. The young man responds that he has been faithful to these commandments, and Jesus takes him at his word. But having affirmed him in what he is doing well, he now tells the young man where he is “lacking.” As the Gospel says, he looks upon him with love, and then tells him to sell all that he has, to give it to the poor, and to come and follow him. If the young man desired straight shooting from Jesus, he certainly got it. Even today, we might tend to think that Jesus is asking an awful lot, perhaps too much. After all, this is by all accounts a decent man, a man who treats others fairly, who wants to receive eternal life. Must he really give up everything in order to enter heaven?

One of the deepest truths of our faith is that God knows us better than we know ourselves; he sees us as we really are, beauty spots and blemishes. The Letter to the Hebrews today says that the “word of God … is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating… able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” When Jesus Christ, the Word-made-Flesh, encountered the young man, he saw him at the deepest possible level. He saw that he was at heart a decent person, and that he had obeyed the commandments that related to others. However, he also saw that he was lacking in the first and greatest commandment: to love God above all else, with one’s heart and soul and mind and strength. The young man immediately understands how right Jesus is; he has allowed his material possessions to occupy the primacy of place at the foundation of our very self that only God must have. Only by giving up worship of a lesser god can he secure what he rightly desires: eternal life with the true and living God. Perhaps we can see then that, far from being unfair or too demanding, Jesus has helped the man go directly to the crux of the matter – he has given the man the insight to see himself as God sees him.

Sadly, as we see, the rich man is not ready to follow Jesus’s invitation. There are many things that can prevent us from hearing and heeding the voice of God. Among them, though, it seems that wealth – especially the love of possessions – presents a particular risk. Why is it so dangerous? Perhaps because it is so attractive, so alluring, and so misleading. Riches and possessions can lure us into the false sense that we are safe and secure, protected from many of the things that can cause unhappiness in this life. The rich young man in today’s Gospel certainly did not have to worry about the things that many people in first century Palestine did: how to secure another day’s wages, how to put bread on the table for another meal, how to keep a roof over their family’s head. But while his wealth offered him a certain amount of worldly security, it did not answer the deep longing that he had for the assurance of gaining eternal life. In fact, as we saw, in the end his riches became the primary obstacle for the heavenly inheritance that he desired.

The Gospel today presents us with a chance to examine how we treat the things of this world, especially our material possessions. We may not tend to think of ourselves as overly wealthy – certainly we can think of others who have more than we do. But the truth is that – compared to others whom we know, compared to others in our society and around the world, certainly compared to others throughout history – most of us in fact live lives that are quite comfortable and comparatively well off. How subtly at times do we fall into that mindset of making our material possessions the standard by which we judge our security, the goal toward which all of our efforts and striving are aimed!

Friends, we would do well to listen to the voice of Jesus, speaking with love to us – he who knows us so well, and who desires our perfection. Like the rich young man, most of us are decent enough – but it is not mere decency that will save us. Instead, we must be willing to do what the young man was not: to give up whatever occupies the primacy of place in our hearts that is not the living God. Do we give greater attention to material rather than spiritual matters? Do we treat our resources as an end, rather than a means to provide for those in our care, to help the less fortunate, to build up the Church? Have we let the desire for possessions or a focus on financial security distract us from the heavenly inheritance that God calls us to share? Do we spend more time thinking and worrying about what we have, what we don’t have, or what we want to have than we do about the state of our souls?

Pope Benedict XVI once said, “Christ did not promise an easy life. Those who desire comforts have dialed the wrong number. Rather, he shows us the way to great things, the Good, towards an authentic human life.” The rich young man in today's Gospel was not ready to accept the Lord’s invitation, but there are many who have. Today in Rome, Pope Francis canonized seven new saints for our Church – men and women who heard the voice of Christ speaking to them, and who responded. Unlike the rich young man, they knew that true, lasting wealth lies in being in relationship with the living God, and they sought to love him with all of their heart and soul and mind and strength, forsaking whatever else threatened to take his place. If we desire to join their company, let us hear the Lord’s gentle, loving invitation this day, and respond by doing whatever we must to inherit eternal life.