Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you.
A reading from the holy gospel according to Mark. Glory to you, Lord.
As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Jesus answered him, why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
You know the commandments. You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not defraud.
Honor your father and mother.
He replied and said to him, teacher, all these I have observed since my youth.
Jesus looking at him, loved him and said to him, you are lacking in one thing. Go sell what you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.
At that statement, his face fell and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.
The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, 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. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ if you have ever had a moment in your life where you were giving all the effort you could to achieve something that was painfully difficult, and someone said to you, oh, that'll never happen.
You know how deeply discouraging that can be? It could be trying to accomplish something. It could be trying to learn a new skill, it could be trying to get over something that caused you deep pain.
It could be trying to get past grief.
But to hear those words, just to use a metaphor lets the air out of the balloon. You just cant seem to get past it. Well, ive got the perfect answer for you to give to anybody that would say that to you. So write this down.
Well thats okay, because my God is a God of the impossible.
Because that is what Jesus is trying to share with us in a very real way, that any of those moments where we are deeply struggling, where we can't seem to get over the hump, where we realize we can't do it on our own.
Those are the times where we need to hand whatever our effort is over to God, trusting that God will give us exactly what we need to do those extremely difficult things in life.
For here we have this rich young man who is confident. He's lived out his faith as best he could, but he's failed to recognize that his best efforts, when done on their own, are still lacking. They don't have everything.
Because he hadn't surrendered his life yet fully to God, he had begun to think that it was by his effort that he would find justification.
And there is not one of us in this church right now that can justify ourselves.
We are all dependent upon God.
But the second part, the second lesson that we need to learn from this is the detail that's thrown in there on purpose.
Remembering that the scriptures are alive.
Jesus looked at him and loved him.
He knew his weakness. He knew his brokenness, and he loved him.
That is also the exact same way he looks at each one of us. He knows we are far from perfect. He knows we can be weak and frail. He knows that we can fall into sin more often than we like to admit.
But he looks at each one of us, and he loves us.
And it's that love that's supposed to allow us, and does allow us to surrender, doing it all ourselves and trust that he'll do it for us.
