Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
(I Peter
1:3-9; Mark 10:17-27)
Like many men,
the one in today’s gospel is strong and ambitious. As if it were seeking Hawaiian real estate,
he asks Jesus what must he do to have eternal life. Jesus does not reject the man for his
pretension. Quite the contrary, he
speaks to him as a peer. Jesus queries
the man to see if any of the commandments has humbled him. When he hears that all
of them are kept, Jesus tells the man to impoverish himself and to follow him. The man is devastated. His many possessions
are his life. He would no longer give up
his possessions than he would die.
That is
Jesus’ point. If one is to inherit
eternal life, that person must die to himself or herself. Unless that happens, the person will go about
like child on a merry-go-round never getting anywhere. A poet once described the cost of eternal
life. T.S. Eliot wrote that the heaven
for which humans are made is a condition of “complete simplicity (costing not
less than everything).” There, after the ultimate sacrifice is made “all shall
be well and all manner of thing shall be well…”
We have
been held up since Christmas enjoying the fruits of many people’s labor. It is time to move ahead to the Promise Land. Like the man in the gospel, we may be
reluctant to begin this season of austerity.
But we must die to self if we are to inherit eternal life.
