Moments of Divine Opportunity

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before Him and asked, Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” This man, that Matthew’s Gospel says it’s a young man, is drawn to Jesus, maybe he’s just heard about Him. Maybe he’s heard Jesus actually preaching before, and he’s drawn to this eternal life, a life which is more than just this short, very passive, very imperfect life that we have here. And he senses that Jesus is the one who can give him that key. And so Jesus says to obey the commandments. And he says, “teacher, all of these I observe from my youth. What do I still lack?” And so he’s looking for something more. Something in Jesus has awakened him, the desire for something more. We had today the passage which speaks of the Word of God in the Letter to the Hebrews, it says, “living is the word of God and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” And so he’s began to sense this living power of the Word of God, which has already begun penetrating in him, and he’s begun sensing its power, which is awakening in him, this desire for eternal life. And maybe we can sometimes sense something of that also, a desire, a deep desire for something more. Maybe there can be moments in our life, maybe moments of special joy, and maybe moments are very difficult, but which awaken in us the desire for something more. That can be an action of the Holy Spirit, the awakening in us and we can try to ignore it, or we can let it grow, let the power of this call, this call for something more, grow in us. And in fact, because we know that there’s so much in a world which distracts us, and so even just coming to Mass is a chance to put aside the distractions and the pulls, the temptations of the world and begin to perceive this call to something more. What is the eternal life? Eternal doesn’t mean just it lasts a long time; it means it’s the fullness of life. And so as I said, Matthew’s Gospel says this is a young man and St John Paul, way back in 1995, in a letter, he wrote to the youth, he used this gospel precisely as the basis for his meditation. So it speaks especially to youth, but it’s not, of course, just for youth. And we see in the Gospel, Jesus encounters many different people, and each encounter is unique. And Jesus’ encounter with each one of us is unique, but at the same time, we can learn, all of us can learn from this young man’s encounter. So what does the Lord want you to learn from this encounter? The young man didn’t know this. He thought that Jesus didn’t know him, but Jesus, as God, had been waiting for this encounter; in a sense, waiting since creation, for this encounter with this young man. This was a moment, a special moment of opportunity, a moment of great potential. And Jesus had already, by His Holy Spirit, awakened in him this desire for something more. And the gospel, today’s Gospel, says something very unusual. It says, “Jesus looking at him, loved him.” Of course, he’s not the only one that Jesus has loved in the gospel. But for some reason the gospel, I don’t know if there’s another gospel which says that same thing, that Jesus, looking at him, loved him. But it’s signaling the special love that Jesus has for this young man, again, who probably felt that Jesus didn’t know him. You know, he might have felt kind of like a face in the crowd. And sometimes we can feel that way with God.  We might feel like we’re kind of a face in the crowd; God doesn’t really notice us that much because there’s so many other more important people. But I think that that’s one of the things, that this is signaling, that just like what Jesus on His life here on Earth, His time on Earth was limited. You know, that’s the situation for all of us. Our time on this earth is limited, and so we can’t give everybody all our time. Because, for instance, a parent who has a lot of children can’t give each one of their children all their time. And we can’t do that for anybody, because our time is limited. But Jesus, in His divinity, doesn’t have those limitations, and so He can give all His attention to each one of us. That’s why He says to Saint Faustina that we have to think of His acts, His sacrifice, as being done just for you alone. And this love of Jesus that is being expressed, that the gospel is expressing, is the greatest treasure of all, the love of God. There’s nothing greater than the love of God. That’s what’s being revealed to this young man, that this is the greatest of all treasures and everything else, all that is truly good, all that will for eternity be good, comes from this love. And so then Jesus, in that love, says to him, (and again, I’m combining also what the gospel in St. Matthew says.), it says, “If you want to be perfect,” so if you want to go beyond the minimum, and that’s what this young man is asking, not just the young man doesn’t say, Lord, what’s the minimum I need to do to be saved? Now he’s saying, “what more do I lack?” And so Jesus says, “If you want to be perfect,”- so go beyond the minimum, to be all that God created you to be, to be perfect. To be perfect doesn’t mean to be saint so and so, because their mission was different. It means to be fully the person that God created you to be, to fulfill the mission He gave you. And we use that expression to realize our full potential or be the best version of yourself. Well, if that’s understood in this light of the light of being the person God wants me to be, God created me to be, then it’s true, that’s being perfect. Jesus says to him, “Your one thing is lacking for you, go sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Jesus doesn’t ask the same thing of everyone in the gospel. But to this young man who’s asking, what more do I need to do? When he asked, “What do I need for eternal life?” Jesus says, “obey the commandments.” But then when he says, “what more do I need to do?” That is to be fully who You created me to be. Jesus says, Jesus gives him this demanding call to free himself from all the obstacles, everything that’s holding him back. And Jesus says, “you will have a treasure in heaven.” Jesus doesn’t want to take something away from him. He wants to give much more to him, but there’s an obstacle to what He wants to give, and that’s this man’s material richness. And so Jesus is wanting to free him from that, to give him something much greater. In a sense, I mean, to speak in financial language, Jesus is inviting him to make the best possible investment, to take what he has, and by giving it to the poor, it’s investing it so that he will have an infinite richness forever. So almost every investment demands that you have to sacrifice something for a while, to get something much greater in the future. And a lot of investments are, some of them are Ponzi schemes. And, you know, there’s some of them don’t work out. You know, they’re some of them. But this, in this case, he knows that his security is full because it’s our Lord Himself who is promising it. No other investment manager or banker or stock can guarantee what God says. God says that this will give you an infinite return, but that’s what the Lord is promising him. So what’s his response? It says, “at that statement, his face fell”, his face fell, “and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.” You know, that’s not an expression that we’re used to hearing in our society. He went away sad because he had many possessions, right? We think the opposite. We’re sad because we don’t have stuff. And we’d be happy if we had more stuff, right? If we would win the lottery. It’s really interesting reading about the people who win the lottery, how much that, lot of times, ruins their life. But this is a very striking passage. “He went away sad because he had many possessions.” It’s hard for him to give up those possessions. And the riches are not just money or financial possessions, but the riches can be all sorts of things, can be relationships and can be all sorts of things, all sorts of talents and gifts, which we can have and, but they can often be a problem. In fact, I think sometimes that’s why God takes things away from us, because there are things which we wouldn’t be able to give up by ourselves. And so He can sometimes help us. It seems to us that, you know, for instance, the richness of our health. You know, also all sorts of the richest talents. And so sometimes the Lord can take those away from us. We were talking about this, I think, last week or the week before, because we wouldn’t be able to give those up by ourselves. And so sometimes we can think, Lord, you gave so and so, these gifts, these talents, these riches, how come you didn’t give them to me? And it might be because we would become too attached to them. They would become idols. They would become obstacles to our salvation, obstacles to the real riches that He wants to give us. And so this young man goes away sad. These things are pulling him away from Jesus. These things are keeping him from the fullness that God wants for him. And I think all of us struggle with that. All of us struggle to respond to Jesus and to let go of certain things, of certain things in our life, where we can feel, Lord, I would like to follow you. I would like to be completely given to you. But I can’t, I can’t let go of certain things. And so the words of Jesus, so we can say, well, then it’s hopeless, right? It’s hopeless than that I can’t do it. And as the apostles are saying, well, then who can be saved? And so Jesus’ response is- is very important. He says, “For man, it is impossible.” That is, it’s not just a matter of trying harder. It’s not just a matter of learning something new and trying harder. He says, “For man, it’s impossible.” He doesn’t say it’s really difficult. He says it’s impossible, so we should all just go home, right? Give up and go home. He says it’s impossible. But then He says, “but not for God. For God, all things are possible.” And so it’s impossible for us if we’re relying on our own abilities, on our own virtues, on our own willpower, on our own holiness, it’s impossible. And that’s why, as Jesus says so often through St Faustina, He insists on trust, on faith. That’s the whole. the whole charism our mission, the Mission of Divine Mercy – faith so that God can act. Again, we often think of it as faith so that I can act, faith so that I have the knowledge and the willpower to act. But it’s faith so that God Himself can act. So this is a call not to give up, but to put our confidence, to put our trust in God. And I think here that the gospel doesn’t – well, it kind of does say this. So it says the man’s face fell and he went away sad, so he took his eyes off Jesus. And I think that that is like the key. How can we overcome?  Because we’re weak and we’re as sinners, we’re attached to so many things which are pulling us away, and so how can we respond? And so if we keep our attention focused on what we’re going to have to give up, which is always what the devil is trying to make us do, all God’s going to make you give up this and that. And then this is going to happen. This is going to happen. You know, the devil always gives us his movie of the future, and that’s very important to be aware of, the movie the devil gives us the future, right? He’s showing this is what your future is going to be like. The devil doesn’t know our future. He doesn’t know, he’s not God, but he paints us a picture of what our future is going to be. It’s going to be like this, and it’s going to be terrible, and you’re not going to be able to make it. And you know, so it gives us this terrible, terrible painting, terrible movie. And so how can we overcome that? And I think that in the messages, the messages the Lord’s been given to our community, He says, here’s something He says over and over and over again, He says, and this is, I think, the key point. He says, “Keep your eyes on Me.” Keep your eyes on me. Keep our attention on Jesus. The devil is doing all he can to distract us and tempt us away, you know, so we’re kind of in this whirlwind of our world, because our strength only comes from Jesus. It doesn’t come from ourselves. It only comes from Jesus, and there’s no place else that we can get it except Jesus. And so that’s the importance of keeping our attention on Jesus, because God respects our freedom. That’s another thing this gospel shows is God respects our freedom. And so this young man, Jesus doesn’t, it doesn’t say that Jesus kept them there by force. Jesus could have done that easily. He could have said, poof, and all your riches are gone, poof, and all you know, you’re forced to follow me. He didn’t do that. He respected his freedom, and He respects our freedom, which is kind of scary. And so what can we do? It’s keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, because if we keep our attention on Jesus, no matter what our weaknesses and sins are, then the grace of God is greater than all of that. It doesn’t mean that we won’t struggle, it doesn’t mean that we won’t fall. It doesn’t mean that it will be easy, but it means that the grace of God in Jesus Christ is greater than all of the riches. And we have another example of a young man, St Francis of Assisi, who was a young man who loved parties and all sorts of stuff, but the grace of God penetrated him, and he gave up all. There’s the famous story of – his dad was a rich merchant called him before the judge because he was giving away his dad’s wealth, his rich materials. And so Saint Francis then, in front of the judge, in front of his dad, takes off all his clothes and walks away. Says, Okay, I’m giving you everything that you gave me so that I’m completely free. And so I’m not saying that we should do the same thing, but the grace of God had freed him from all his attachments. And so I think that’s the key, and the key for all of us who if we keep our eyes focused on Jesus, if we keep our trust in Jesus, if we keep making acts of trust in Jesus that his grace can overcome all the resistance in us. And so we can say, Lord, I want to respond fully to you, but I can’t do it by myself. And so my trust is in you, Jesus. I trust in You. In the first reading, we had an example of another young man struggling to make decisions. It says, “I prayed, and prudence was given me. I pleaded,” so he prayed so this is from God, “I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me. I preferred her to scepter and throne and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her. Nor did I liken any priceless gem to her, because all gold in view of her is a little sand. And before her, silver is to be counted as mud. Beyond health and beauty, I loved her, and I chose to have her rather than the light, because the splendor of her never yields to sleep. Yet all good things together came to me in her company and countless riches at her hands.” So he gives up everything to respond to this wisdom of God. And in it, he says, “I received everything, countless riches at her hands.” So in conclusion, we ask our Blessed Mother, seat of wisdom to help us to let the word, the living Word of God penetrate into us, awakening in us, a call to all that God wants us to be, all that God created you for, and calling us to be free of all that, like the spider web by which the devil is trying to hold us back. By looking at Jesus, keeping our eyes on Jesus. And what happens when you look at Jesus? You know the thing is, when you look at Jesus, He’s never distracted and looking at somebody else and forgetting you. Like, hey Jesus, look whistling and saying, look here I am. Remember me. You forgot me. No, the thing is, when you look at Jesus, you realize that He’s always looking at you. He never takes His eyes off you. He’s always looking at you with love. And so that word is for you. Jesus is looking at you with love. We get distracted from Him. He never gets distracted from us. And so we come back to Him. We always encounter His gaze of love, even if we have sinned, even if we have been unfaithful, even if we have forgotten Him for a long time. He’s always looking at you with love. And if we keep our attention on that, that’s the greatest of riches. But again, the devil is always, in the devil, in the world is always trying to pull us away. So it’s a struggle, the struggle to keep our attention on Him. And so Holy Communion in this Mass is that encounter, that special encounter with our Lord, who is looking at you with love, waiting for this moment of encounter, wanting to give you the fullness of His treasure and fill your life. But for that, He needs you to respond fully to Him, putting Him above everything else. But not to be discouraged by our own weakness, just to recognize, humbly, Lord, I can’t do it by myself. For me, it’s impossible, but not for You. By your Holy Spirit, You can do this in me if I keep, if I keep turned to You, Your Holy Spirit can do this in my life. Faith so that God can act. Jesus, we trust in You. Amen.

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Mark 10:17-30
Hebrews 4:12-13
Wisdom 7:7-11