XXVIII Sunday Ordinary Time (B) October 13, 2024

1. "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? So addresses such a one surely animated by good will and sincere intention to Jesus, who replies to him: if you want to enter eternal life you must keep the commandments i.e., do not kill, do not steal, do not be false, do not treat others badly, honor your father and mother, and the interlocutor replies that he knows all the commandments well, he has even put them into practice since his youth. Surely he expects applause for this, proper recognition, which is after all obvious if he really is such a faithful observer of the Mosaic law. Jesus, however, is not a doctor of the law, a master rabbi of doctrine, and he is not content to explain what one must do to be in good standing with God. Faithful observance of the commandments constitutes only a stage and not the goal of life. As always happens when one encounters God, this person is about to cross the greatest opportunity of his existence: Jesus fixes his gaze on him, loves him, and in this gesture there is everything. Here we are at the center of the story but also of this man's life, the moment when one can decide one's destiny by letting oneself be fixed by a gaze of love that is proposal and request, offer and provocation. In such cases it is risky and liberating to trust totally. To let oneself be taken in or to reject God's love is the very issue of eternal life. Of this encounter the evangelist seems to offer a detail that only the person concerned could report with such finesse. Some even think that St. Mark is recounting what he experienced as a protagonist. It could in fact be him, the young man who in the passion narrative (Mk 14:51 f; 16:5 f) follows Jesus from afar until in the Garden of Gethsemane he flees naked and abandons everything: he will later become a faithful disciple of Peter and will write the second gospel where traits with an autobiographical flavor are glimpsed. Christ's gaze of love continues to be a source of sadness until one gives up and the restlessness it leaves in one's soul can only be fruitful. Only one thing you lack, Christ tells him! This is not advice, it is an invitation to open our eyes, to wake up from the sleep of uncertainty, to understand what we really need to inherit eternal life, to enter the Kingdom. What is lacking? Go, sell everything you own and give it to the poor. Is there not a different way of expressing the commandment of love of neighbor here? The rich man loves the poor when he distributes all that he possesses to those who have nothing and nothing they can render him in return. And love for God must always be combined with this concrete love for others: we do not love God whom we cannot see if we do not love our neighbor who crosses our path instead.  Sell everything, then follow me! Only if you are free can you embrace the gospel: the proposal of following is immediate and clear. Here, however, we touch on the fragile side of the existence of this man whom tradition sometimes identifies as the rich young man: he has realized that to follow Christ and be part of the group of his disciples, one must be free of everything and he has realized that his riches enslave him, as a junkie depends on drugs. As a result, he leaves really sad and his sadness appears as a confession of his selfishness. However, the fact that he becomes sad is a positive sign because he is becoming aware and when he finishes thinking that heaven is not earned but is God's love offering, he will be ready to accept salvation, a free gift from his heavenly Father and not man's conquest. Jesus provoked him to deprive himself of everything, reversed the perspective: salvation cannot be earned, but is received on one's knees with a grateful spirit. To be able to come to do this there is no other way but freedom of heart: that is, we must be ready to detach ourselves from everything that in any way keeps us bound and prevents us from loving in earnest. At this point, St. Mark seems to take pleasure in showing that even the apostles are not in tune with Jesus' thinking because they too reason with the logic of merit. We are all, after all, in one way or another, in many ways slaves to ourselves!

2. What can Jesus do but constellate reality?  The Son of Man, who is homeless and does not even own a stone for a pillow, came into the world to show the path of freedom that leads to happiness, and he has to admit that even good people like this rich personage and even his disciples prefer the bank account to the gift of love that he proposes. The gospel narrates that at Jesus' words the apostles are amazed, indeed bewildered: therefore, even they are not in tune with their Master. We can understand them, however, because riches, as appears in some Old Testament texts, were considered a gift from heaven; the one who therefore possessed an abundance of them was considered fortunate and blessed. Jesus, however, as in other situations, does not sugarcoat his way of expressing himself, he does not discount because he did not come to abolish the Mosaic law but to bring it to full fruition, and he insists, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Each of us resembles the camel that claims to enter through the eye of a needle. It is a paradoxical image that always surprises, although Jesus is neither the first nor the only one to use it to indicate the near impossibility of accomplishing anything. There is, for example, another Hebrew saying from the same era, which we find in the Talmud of Babylon, about an elephant passing through the eye of a needle. Certainly the image is striking, indeed shocking, but Jesus uses it to warn: it is indeed difficult for those whose hearts are weighed down by material concerns to enter into the logic of God's kingdom. Attachment to material well-being, to what we possess, ends up making us feel self-sufficient and we easily become possessed by it, missing the opportunity to discover the beauty of life as a gift. However, what is impossible for humans becomes possible to God and if he can do everything, he also possesses every means to save us: only he can and will save us because saving oneself is neither easy nor difficult: it is absolutely impossible for man. Salvation is not purchased; it is a gift.

3. At this point Peter takes the floor on behalf of all: "Behold we have left everything and followed you." The step necessary to. enter the Kingdom of Heaven we have taken and we have left everything behind, so we certainly deserve something. Jesus takes them at their word and announces that they are entitled to the reward, but this reward comes with pain and toil: it is persecution following in the Master's footsteps because the disciple's mission will know the same mystery of the cross, the only path of liberation and salvation. He does not want to discourage them and promises much more than what they gave up to follow him: a hundredfold of everything except for what concerns the father because those who leave everything to follow Jesus discover the face of the one Father who is in heaven. The Father awaits us in eternal life as a gift and not as a reward. Ultimately detaching oneself from everything places in the human heart the deepest roots of hope that opens wide the gates of heaven. I am reminded in this regard of a phrase by Georges Bernanos from his famous novel "Diary of a Country Parson" in which he explores the themes of faith, suffering and hope. He writes, "I do believe that the world will be saved by the poor. These poor are there only we know them badly because they know each other badly too. They have made no vow of poverty: it is the good God who has made it for them, unbeknownst to them. The poor have the secret of hope." Jesus is the model of poverty who encourages us to embrace, serve and love the poor who become, as St. Vincent de Paul teaches, "our masters," and St. Louis Orione adds, "and we their servants" because they concretely live, without often realizing it, the gift of hope and, burdened by the labors of this earthly life, they confidently await heaven. "Such a poor man," Bernanos writes, "eats daily in the hand of God.

+ Giovanni D'Ercole