Good morning. On Saturday, I had the blessed opportunity to join our parochial vicar, Fr. Michael Rhodes, in leading the Men's Retreat. We had about 30 men in attendance from around the Diocese. The theme of the retreat was “hope” because, as you all may know, we are in the Jubilee Year of Hope to commemorate the 2,025th anniversary of the Incarnation of the Lord - “. . .the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. . .” (John 1:14).
Fr. Michael walked the men through sacred reading, or lectio divina, and encouraged the men to be "men of the word" of God. I encouraged the men to be "tangible signs" of hope in the world, sharing with them Catholic Church teachings on the theological virtue of hope by Church fathers, doctors, saints, and popes. The Catechism states that hope is “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817).
In asking Jesus what good he must do to gain eternal life, the young man in today’s Gospel is searching for hope that “responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man” (CCC 1818). Hope that inspires and purifies what he does “so as to order [his activities] to the Kingdom of heaven” (id). Hope that “keeps [him] from discouragement. . . sustains him during times of abandonment. . . opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude” (id). This is the hope that we search for in our own lives because, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that our hearts will always be restless until they rest in the Sacred Heart of Jesus (St. Augustine).
Jesus answers the young man by first reminding him that only God is good and then telling him to follow the commandments and laws that God has written on his heart (Jeremiah 31:33), namely to love his neighbor as himself. When pressed further by the young man who asked Jesus what he still lacked, Christ replied to him, saying: “. . .go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” In other words, Jesus is telling the young man that he will not find what he is searching for - which is “eternal life” - in his “many possessions” but in the “treasure in heaven.”
In a way, the young man in today’s Gospel reminds me of Saint Augustine. In a recent homily, Pope Leo XIV said that “Saint Augustine, reflecting on his intense search for God, asked himself: ‘What, then, is the object of our HOPE [...]? Is it the earth? No. Is it something that comes from the earth, such as gold, silver, trees, crops, or water [...]? These things are pleasing, these things are beautiful, these things are good’ (Sermo 313/F, 3). And the conclusion he reached was: ‘Seek the one who made them, he is your hope’” (ibid.). Our hope is not in the created things, even if we have “many possessions”. Rather our hope is in the Creator, our Lord and our God.
In the end, the young man turned down Jesus’ invitation to “come, follow” him and “went away sad, for he had many possessions.” Jesus did not stop him because, as Bishop Robert Baron reflected: “Even at the end, when the young man walks away sad, unable to respond to Jesus’ demand, the Lord lets him go. The true God does not compete with freedom; rather, he awakes it and directs it.” And so, my sisters and brothers in Christ, as we prepare to receive our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist at Holy Communion, let us reflect on Jesus’ invitation to “come and follow” him and respond, not like the young man did, but in the words of Saint Paul who said that “life is Christ” (Philippians 1:21).
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