12th Sunday After Pentecost

Matthew 19:16-26

In today’s holy gospel, a man comes up to our Lord and asks, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ This is a very good question… indeed, it is probably the most important question we can ask in this life. This must also be the question for each of us… ‘What must we do to inherit eternal life?’

Our Lord responds by reviewing the commandments of God… Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, etc. And Christ finally sums it up by saying that ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’. Elsewhere in the Gospels Christ similarly summarizes all the commandments as boiling down to ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength and with all thy mind: and thy neighbor as thyself.’

We must remember one thing and we must transform our lives according to this one thing: we must love God above all else and we must treat our neighbors with love. It is as simple as that. And it is as challenging as that.

There is no higher calling than God’s call to love; and if we can fulfill it – or, with God’s help, at least be striving towards it - then all the other commandments, canons, and rules of conduct and piety fall naturally into place. You don’t judge, or harm, or insult, or try to get the better of someone you love. You seek to console, protect, and see all good things for those whom you love. What a different world we would live in if mankind lived by this Gospel commandment. And, rather than standing in frustrated judgment of this world so lacking in love, let us focus on the one place where love may be lacking where we can do something about it – our own heart! You and I may not be able to change the world – and besides that, ‘the world’ is an abstraction. Christianity is always personal, not abstract. We can change our lives and the lives of those around us if we do our very best to live Christ’s commandment of love.

Now the young man in today’s Gospel declared that he kept all of these commandments. What else did he lack? Christ, the Great Physician, knew precisely the medicine needed for this particular soul and he told him that if he would be perfect, he should go and sell all that he possessed, give it to the poor, and follow Him.

This cut to the heart of the particular passion that weighed this man down: while he zealously kept the commandments, he suffered from an underlying love of possessions. And it was too much for him… the Gospel says he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions.

How tragic! But before we dare to judge this young man, let us ask ourselves… what particular passion of ours might Christ pinpoint if we were in this Gospel scene? Perhaps it is our laziness, perhaps it is our love of comfort, perhaps it is some sensual sin, or pride, or our desire to be in control, or fear, or something else. All of us have one or more particular anchors that weigh us down in our spiritual life. In addition to striving toward that love of God and neighbor that draws us forward, we need to identify, humbly acknowledge, and work to root out our particular ‘anchor’ – that thing that might cause us to walk away sorrowful from the Lord’s invitation to follow Him.

But Father, you may say… I have been trying to conquer my particular passion for years! Every time I come to confession it is the same list of things over and over again! I’ll never win!

Yes, you’re right. As the Apostles cried out in today’s Gospel: ‘Who then can be saved?’

Christ looked upon them with compassion, just as He looks upon you with compassion and He says: ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’

You and I are called to struggle courageously to take up our cross, to deny our self and to follow Christ. We must seek to shed ourselves of anything that gets in the way between the love of God and our ability to receive that love. It requires humility and honesty to admit our sins and it requires persistence and patience to stay the course in working to root them out of our lives.

What is the fuel and motivation that might cause us to strive to live a Christian life? To come to church, to fast and to pray, to work to avoid our habitual sins? At the beginning level is might be the fear of punishment which motivates us. We want to avoid hell fire. There are plenty of references to this motivation in the Scriptures and it can help us to live a Christian life… but this is the lowest level.

At a higher level we may be motivated to live a Christian life, to come to church, to fast and to pray, and work to avoid our sins – motivated by a desire for reward. We want to enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven and hear the words of Christ: ‘Well done good and faithful servant.’ This too is a legitimate source of motivation for us to live a Christian life. But it is not the highest level.

The highest level of motivation for us to live a Christian life, to come to church, to fast and to pray, to work to avoid our sins… the highest reason for us to do this is simply and purely because of our love for God. All of our Christian efforts are an outpouring of our love for God… avoiding punishment or seeking reward fall by the wayside and are eclipsed simply by our gratitude and love for Christ our God – Who first loved us and so we respond in kind with love.

Our priority and our focus must be on the love of God. We strive courageously, not because we will be victorious, but out of the abundance of our love for God. We strive courageously because in doing so, we reduce our attachment to our passions, and we unite ourselves to Christ. And this is the point… Christ is the victor over sin. If we unite ourselves to Christ, we enter into and participate in His victory, we participate in His crucifixion and His resurrection. And this, brothers and sisters in Christ is our salvation!