In the Gospel today, we hear about a rich man who wishes to inherit the Kingdom of God. It was the understanding of the time that your social and financial status had some bearing – significantly so, in fact – on your status in the afterlife. Jesus’ teachings blew this understanding out of the water, and in today’s Gospel we see his followers amazed and perplexed. At the time, it would have seemed absolutely astonishing to hear the words of Christ to the rich man.
We Cistercians, contrary to popular belief, do not take a ‘vow of poverty’. However, it is true that we agree to own all in common. This is like the first disciples. A tall order, and sometimes difficult to live out in the everyday; but it keeps us close to the financial poverty that Jesus requires of us, as it is pivotal to our particular vocation. Leaving father and mother to join the monastery, and renouncing our money and many possessions, the point is to be able to concentrate on God without the fetters and chains of worldly trappings.
Whilst not all of us are called to be Cistercians, we are all called to sanctity, and at the head of this vocation is the poverty of Christ. Is our mind and heart so deeply on worldly wealth that we do not afford to see the love of God, perhaps even our vocation?
Being poor can help us to understand the needs of the poor, yet being rich can give us the opportunity to use temporal means to help others. Perhaps then, this is an opportunity to find a middle way: not living a monastic life of ascetic renunciation, but neither living for wealth alone.
Today’s Gospel is asking us to shift our priorities from temporal wealth to God. The story takes away the grey area of finding a middle way, because it is in that way that we run the greater risks of abandoning the road to God. It’s true that monastic life has its pressures, it’s deep ravines of doubt and temptation. But to live within a community of like-minded individuals significantly helps us to stay on that road. Should all the faithful make at least some step towards shifting their priorities more towards God, then we would be curating a healthier and more authentic Church; healthier for ourselves and our spiritual life, and more authentic to the Gospel message.
GOSPEL
The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark (10:17-30)
Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus was setting out on a journey when a man ran up, knelt before him and put this question to him,
‘Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Jesus said to him,
‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
You know the commandments: You must not kill; You must not commit adultery;
You must not steal; You must not bring false witness;
You must not defraud; Honour your father and mother.‘
And he said to him,
‘Master, I have kept all these from my earliest days.’
Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said,
‘There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’
But his face fell at these words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.
Jesus looked round and said to his disciples,
‘How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!’
The disciples were astounded by these words, but Jesus insisted,
‘My children,’ he said to them, ‘how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.‘
They were more astonished than ever.
‘In that case ‘they said to one another ‘who can be saved?‘
Jesus gazed at them.
‘For men’ he said ‘it is impossible, but not for God: because everything is possible for God.’
Peter took this up. ‘What about us?‘ he asked him. ‘We have left everything and followed you.‘
Jesus said,
‘I tell you solemnly, there is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, father, children or land
for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not be repaid a hundred times over,
houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and land – not without persecutions –
now in this present time and, in the world to come, eternal life.’
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.