The key to a healthy spiritual life is to be ok with being uncomfortable…
He went away sad (Mk 10: 22).
The 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time brings us the story of the rich young man. It is impossible to read this story and not hear the profound challenge in it. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven (Mk 10:21).
Throughout the whole history of the Church, men and women have been moved by these words to do exactly that, and to live lives of consecrated poverty depending solely on Divine Providence for their needs. Anthony of the Desert, Francis of Assisi, and (closer to home) Catherine de Hueck Doherty all founded their following of the Lord on a literal application of Christ’s words to this man.
We of Madonna House are called to that same literalness and following. But what about you who may well not be a nun or monk or member of some such consecrated institute? Is this Gospel something you are merely a spectator to, a matter of purely academic interest? “Well, isn’t it nice that God asks such radical things of a few people here and there. Glad it’s not me!”
Of course we know that is wrong. Every word of the Gospel is a word of life for every disciple of Jesus Christ. There is not one little bit of Jesus’ words and deeds as recorded in the Scriptures that does not implicate how all the baptized are to live their lives.
And it is a word of life, not a word of death. A word that makes life alive, that makes life a radiant, beautiful thing, not a word that lays a heavy burden on our backs or robs us of joy.
The story of the rich young man is a call for all Christians and ultimately for every human being to totality, to the total gift, the absolute abandonment of ourselves and all we have and are to the service of the Lord. It is a call to view whatever has been given us, great or small, in any field of wealth (not just money and possessions but strength, talent, wit, charm) as being given to us for one reason and one alone.
And that reason is to love, and especially to love the poor, again defined by any standard of poverty. Let the materially rich man help the poor one, let the strong one help the weak, the talented one share those talents for the good of all, the intelligent one use that wit for the benefit of humanity, the charming, charismatic person use this gift to draw people together in community.
Whatever you have is to be used for others and to be offered to God as a pleasing sacrifice. No exceptions, no limits, no doubt.
That’s the meaning of this Gospel. While most of us can see this, I hope, as something quite beautiful and as a joyous way to live, most of us are also painfully aware of how short we can fall of this exalted ideal.
We all have this problem called sin and selfishness. Acting against that selfish will that lives in all of us is painful, even if we really believe the end is joy and beauty.
What has always struck me, though, in this Gospel, is that the rich young man went away sad.
That’s too bad! Jesus never told him to go away, just like he never told all the people wanting to stone the woman taken in adultery (Jn 8) to go away, either. If they had just stuck around, they would have heard those same words spoken to them, I believe. Neither do I condemn you — go and sin no more.
The fact is, we are confronted all the time by demands of the Gospel that seem too much for us. They’re not really insurmountable, because for man it is impossible, for God all things are possible (Mk 10:27). But they seem to be, to our poor, limited perception.
The trick is to not go away sad, or mad, or glad for that matter. Whoever comes to me, I will not send away (Jn 6: 37).
So just … don’t go away. Jesus is asking of you more than you are prepared to give? Okay, be sad or mad about that, but don’t go away from him. He’s not sending you away, so don’t you leave, either.
The disciples were continually being challenged by the Lord well beyond what they could countenance at that time. They kept following him nonetheless, and, in time, most of them attained a martyr’s crown.
The Gospel calls us to enormous heights and unfathomable depths, whether it is in the total generosity this passage calls us to, or in the total forgiveness, total prayer, total trust, total humility that so many other passages elicit. Every page of the Gospel, if we read it with any seriousness, should cause us to feel at least somewhat uncomfortable in the absoluteness of its demands.
In some ways, the key to a healthy spiritual life is to be okay with being uncomfortable with the Lord.
To hang on, even if we feel quite humiliated by our daily failures to preach the Gospel with our lives, without compromise. To not give up, to not go away, either externally by leaving the Church and the practice of the faith, or internally by settling for a mediocre half-hearted living of our faith.
Above all, to not go away because we know that the One who lays down such a challenging way of life for us is also a tender and merciful Father, a loving and forgiving Lord, and that the main and essential thing he desires from us and for us is that we live all our days in his presence.
If we do this, if we simply refuse to leave his presence no matter how inadequate and poor we feel, his grace and his Spirit in and for us will eventually overcome all our resistance and refusals and confirm us as the lovers of God and neighbor that he has made us to be. And that is what we mean by the virtue of hope.
