From the responsorial psalm: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart. Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants! Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark (Mk 10:17-30)
“Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.” Peter began to say to him, “We have given up everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.”
After Jesus challenges a rich young man him to sell all he has, give the money to the poor, and follow him, the young man walks away saddened by this demand. Jesus then tells the disciples how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. Probably alarmed to hear that worldly success does not automatically indicate the favor of God, the astonished disciples ask Jesus who then can be saved. For human beings, Jesus tells them, impossible, but not for God. Peter’s statement is a strong profession of faith; in it, he professes his detachment from the world and his identity as a follower of Christ. In a way that calls to mind the Beatitudes, Jesus takes the disciples deeper and farther by revealing to them what they have chosen over countless riches—blessings in this life, including persecutions, and eternal life in the world to come.
God, help me recognize your gift of love, the same loving look that Jesus gave to the rich young man. “You are lacking in one thing.” Give me the grace to see what I am lacking to inherit eternal life; not one thing but many. Yet, what is impossible for me, you make possible. Why do I call you good? Because you alone are the Lord. What I lack in poverty of spirit, you make up for in grace. I hear in the Gospel acclamation the wisdom of choosing poverty of spirit over what the world offers: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Guide me today, Lord, toward your loving gaze; teach me to let go of the things that keep me from you.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
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