Tuesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel, Jesus gave us a challenging message: It is difficult to enter the kingdom of heaven with riches. This can be particularly hard to comprehend for the disciples whose society saw wealth as divine favor and for us in our society which values wealth, even equating wealth with virtue and goodness. Therefore, how do we make sense of what Jesus said?
Context can help us answer this question as what happened before this passage sets up Jesus’ teaching. Jesus told a rich young man who wanted to follow him to sell his possessions and follow him. The rich young man went away sad because he didn’t want to give up his possessions. After this, Jesus compared the difficulty of entering the kingdom of heaven with riches to the image of a camel going through the eye of a needle, which the latter was easier than the former. It’s an exaggerated image, but he demonstrated the point that no one enters the kingdom on the basis of possessions or merit. The kingdom is God’s gift to us.
What does that mean for us today? Looking back at Jesus’ response to the rich young man, there are two main themes. When Jesus said “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments…. ‘You shall not kill’; ‘you shall not commit adultery’; ‘you shall not steal’; ‘you shall not bear false witness’; ‘honor your father and mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” (Matthew 19:17-18), he brought up the point that we are to love other people. When Jesus responded, “go sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me,” (Matthew 19:21), he indicated that we are to love God.
Therefore, the Kingdom of God has two elements: loving our neighbors and loving God. The focus is not to earn or receive God’s love or the love of others, but the aim is to give love to God and others. Material wealth can be an obstacle to freely giving love because we can potentially put more value on our possessions. Other things we possess that are internal such as resentment and pride can also be barriers. Jesus invites us to look at what we have externally and internally and to let go of what holds us back from loving God and our neighbor. That way, our heart can truly find treasure in God.
—Sr. Emily Sandoval, FMI