Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading: Wisdom 7:7-11 – I esteemed Wisdom more than sceptres or thrones.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 89(90):12-17 – Fill us with your love so that we may rejoice.

Second Reading: Hebrews 4:12-13 – The word of God cuts more finely than a double-edged sword.

Gospel: Mark 10:17-30 – Give everything you own to the poor, and follow me.

In spiritual journey, a lot of people often get frustrated for their lack of progress. They repeatedly exclaim in utter disappointment: “Why haven’t I found God?” Well, the reason we have not found God is because we have been searching for him in the wrong place. The day we search in the right place, we shall certainly find him. But alas, it is not comfortable to search in the right place. The right place is often the dark place. But people are accustomed to searching where it is clearer and brighter. A man named Malachy was in the field near his house on all fours searching frantically for something. His friend came around and saw him in that desperate search. He asked him what he was looking for, and he replied that he was looking for the keys to his bicycle. Both men bent down and searched all through the length and breadth of the field for nearly an hour. Then his friend asked him: “But where did you lose the keys”? He replied, “I lost it inside my room”. The horrified friend exclaimed: “Why on earth are you looking for it in the field when you lost it inside your room”? It was then that Malachy explained: “You see, my room is very dark; there is no electricity inside, and the windows cannot open. If I look for the keys inside that dark room, I cannot find it. So I decided to come out in the field where it is brighter and clearer”. If you think this is funny, what of those who hold something in their hands and begin to search for it all day long?

The moral of this story is this: search for God where you lost him, not where you think it is brighter. The rich man in the Gospel of today was searching in the wrong place. He knew, as well as Jesus, that his problem was never that of keeping the commandments. Like a good Pharisee that he was, he meticulously and scrupulously kept the laws. He therefore had no problems with keeping the commandments. But he had a problem – that of attachment to wealth. When Jesus told him the right place to search, he went away sad. A light has just been flashed in his little dark room and a lot of hidden and undesirable things have been exposed. Poor fellow! That was not what he bargained for. He wanted justification and approval, but he was told the naked truth. He wanted Jesus to praise him for meticulously keeping the commandments. But instead, Jesus told him: “There is one thing you lack….” The thing he lacked was positive actions. This is also true of us who think that it is sufficient to just obey the commandments as mere routine. The commandments are simply the basics which every right-thinking human being keeps in one form or another, whether they are believers or not. What counts in the last judgment is not how much you kept the commandments but what positive actions you achieved or lacked. In the case of the young man in the Gospel, the positive action he lacked was his unwillingness to let go of his wealth and share it with the less privileged. He didn’t want Jesus to shine a torch light in that dark room of his. He wanted it to remain hidden; and that was why he went away dejected.

Brothers and sisters, every one of us is, in one way or another, the rich young man described in the gospel, searching in the wrong place. We try to hide the real areas where we are wanting, and project areas where we don’t have any problems at all. And this is all done just so as to appear to be great and spiritual. It is ourselves that we deceive, not others. As a child, I dislocated my left arm while playing football. I had observed how painfully my friend reacted to the treatment when he dislocated his own arm a couple of months earlier, and I thought I could outwit my mother by saying that the dislocation was on my right arm instead of my left. When she started massaging the wrong arm, I pretended, by grimacing and shouting, that it was paining me. However, at the end of the “false treatment” I settled in for the night, only to be woken by a very sharp unbearable pain on my left arm. It was only then, and when the pains had become intolerable, that I was forced to tell my mother the whole truth. This is exactly how many of us still behave even as adults. We hide our real problems and project our false sense of spirituality seeking for applause just as the young man did in front of Jesus. This is a classic case of searching in the wrong place.

The young man in the gospel is also a typical example of someone who has been programmed to be unhappy so that no matter what he does to become happy, he is bound to fail. This is how our society and our culture have taught us to believe that we would not be happy without certain persons and certain things. Take a look around you: everywhere people have actually built their lives on the unquestioned belief that without certain things – money, power, success, approval, a good reputation, friendship, etc., they cannot be happy. What is your own particular combination? Once you swallow your belief, you naturally develop an attachment to this person or thing you were convinced you could not be happy without. With this comes effort to acquire and maintain them. Finally, you develop emotional dependence so that those things or persons have the power to make you happy or sad. Once this is done, you have become a slave to your object of attachment. The man in the gospel built his own life on the belief that without his wealth he cannot be happy. Jesus knew the mess he had dug himself into and wanted to free him by asking him to go sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. Too late! Our poor fellow had already reached a point of no return. He couldn’t just let go. He chose to remain a captive king rather than become a free bird. In his search for God, he could not muster the courage to search in the right place.

For every one of us, there are particular things that distract us from concentrating on God. Spirituality means discovering your own combination and addressing them squarely. This is the only way one can be said to have searched in the right place. Spirituality is not boasting about your areas of strength but rather discovering your areas of weakness and directly confronting them. It takes courage and determination to do this because everybody wants to appear to be perfect. But God is not searching for perfect people; God is searching for people to perfect. But to be perfected by God, you need to let go. Whatever you cling to is your riches. And so, when Jesus says hyperbolically that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, the question should not be whether we are rich or not but rather what particular brand of richness do we have. Let go and you will be free. Detach yourself and you will enter the kingdom of God.