The rich young man

Today in the Gospel we meet a fellow who we call the rich young man. We don’t know his name. All we know is that he is rich and he must be young, because he runs towards Jesus. He was in a hurry as young people always are. He must have been a good looking guy. All of us would like to be young, rich and beautiful. If we are young in our spiritual life, we can run towards God. Once we grow older, we begin to drag our feet. Some scholars think that he could be Saint Mark, who ran away three times from the Lord, here, when he was following Jesus at the garden of olives and during the first apostolic trip of Saint Paul. It gives us hope, we that have run away so many times from Jesus.

The fellow asked the most important question in life: What do I have to do to make it to heaven? It is a question we need to ask Jesus from time to time in our prayer: Am I on the right path? Imagine one morning, when you look at your sleepy face in the mirror, you see Jesus’ face. What would his expression be? Smiling, pensive, sad, worried, upset, happy? A spiritual author says that we need to face Jesus at least once a day, just to look at him in the eyes. People nowadays don’t want to ask this question. All they ask is: What do I have to do to become successful, famous, fulfilled, cool, sexy, rich? We should ask about the meaning of our lives now, not when we are almost dead. It is an important question because the answer conditions our present and future happiness.

Jesus answered him: fulfill the commandments. He responded: I do. He was a good guy. The Gospel says that then Jesus looked at him and loved him. When you look at Jesus, you see yourself as you are, and you experience God’s love. Jesus saw he was ready, had a good heart, and asked him for everything: sell all that you have and follow me. That’s the way Jesus loves us, asking something of us. The more he loves, the more he asks for. It is a dangerous question to ask Jesus: What do you want from me? It is very dangerous if we give him a blank cheque, a free credit card. We are afraid he is going to take it. Deep down it is a silly fear, a lack of generosity. We need to be convinced that whatever God is asking of us now is the best for us.

He went away sad because he had many possessions. The sadness of not being generous with God. The contrary of the joy of giving. Jesus hits the nail on the head. When we ask Jesus, he tells us straight away. That’s why we are often afraid to pray; we don’t want to face Jesus. There is always something we are attached to, an obstacle to our happiness, something that separates us from God. Why are we waiting to give it to him? Young people nowadays don’t want to talk about commitment; they are afraid of giving themselves. Why this fear? Too many options, fear of changing their minds, looking for a tangible sign, too much pressure to succeed. It is not easy to compete with the role models we see in social media, where everyone looks perfect.

I imagine the rich man years later, not so young, sitting on the veranda of his farm, looking at his possessions, while Christianity was all over the known world and thinking: I could have been one of the first ones. The real Jesus asked me for everything and I swapped it for few acres of land.

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