Putting Our Possessions in Perspective

Dear Friends,

Money. We earn it. We need it. We want more of it. We share it, or maybe not. Money helps or hinders us in our search for life’s value and meaning.

Take the rich young man that Jesus meets in today’s Gospel. A good man. Still, the rich young man believed that something was missing in his life. He turned to Jesus for insight, and got more than he bargained for, because Jesus pushed him to consider the unthinkable. “Go. Sell what you have and give it to the poor. Then, come follow me.”

The rich young man couldn’t do it. He went away saddened, the Gospel says, but he couldn’t let go of his possessions. All he could do was walk away.

The Word of God is a two-edged sword, we read in Hebrews – today’s second reading. The Word of God was dangerous to the rich young man’s clinging to what he had – a quality he didn’t know was in him until Jesus challenged him.

Having money or even great wealth is not contrary to the Gospel. We have to be very clear about that. It’s the preoccupation with, the clinging to whatever money or possessions we have that is contrary to the Gospel. How hard it is to follow a light, to hear a voice along life’s journey if we are so preoccupied. But it is not impossible. Jesus says that with His God and ours: nothing is impossible.

Avarice, possessiveness, the acquisition of more and better toys are not the prerogative of the wealthy.

No matter what’s in our pocket, its value is defined by the heart.

As the 14th century mystic, Meister Eckhart, pointed out: “where clinging to things ends, there God begins to be.”

These readings invite us to sort out what is really important in our lives and what is not, what we value beyond all else as individuals and as a nation.

We don’t have Jesus before us to challenge us in the same tangible way that he challenged the rich young man, but we do have Jesus and the Spirit of Wisdom described in today’s first reading – the Spirit who enlightens our choices and helps us treat all good things without possessiveness.

“I prayed,” Solomon says, “and prudence was given to me. I pleaded – and the Spirit of Wisdom came to me.”

Would that you and I would be like Solomon. Would that we would pray and plead and be open-handed before God.

~Sister Joan Sobala