Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 10, 2021: Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor...

Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor…

How willing are you to let go of what stands between you and God?

    In the Book of Wisdom, we ostensibly hear the voice of King Solomon, who says that he pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to him. In prayer, Solomon turned to God, opened to God, and was given what he needed; God provided by entering in and sharing God’s wisdom with Solomon. Nothing compares to that wisdom, Solomon knows: I chose to have wisdom rather than the light, because the splendor of her never yields to sleep. Psalm 90 similarly asks for wisdom of heart, though the community’s focus on prosperity makes one wonder if they truly understand wisdom as Solomon does.

   The prosperous young man who approaches Jesus in Mark’s Gospel believes he is close to the kingdom of God: he has kept the commandments, after all. But Jesus sets him straight: You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor. To do so would make the man free to receive all that God has to give him – his heart would be open – but the man is unwilling to let go, for he has many possessions. Jesus, the Word of God referenced in the Letter to the Hebrews, is able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. Jesus knows the man better than the man knows himself, and Jesus loves him. But it is up to the man to choose to give Jesus precedence over all he has accumulated and amassed in his life, and this the man refuses to do.

   So many things keep us from opening our hearts to God’s love. God loves us not because we are deserving but because he created us for that purpose: to love us, that we might know that love. If we are concerned about our own goals, our own prosperity, it’s much harder for God to have any effect in our life. We must focus on the journey, in which we keep opening to God’s wisdom, and experiencing God’s love for us. We must engage with him where he is, in the moment, with nothing standing in the way, confident that all things are possible for God. We must go to our hearts, where he dwells, and trust more in him than in any tangible object, living and living fully, now, because he loves us.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com