Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich
to enter the Kingdom of heaven.
It is to the poor in spirit that the Kingdom of heaven belongs. But it is especially difficult for those who are rich to become poor in spirit. Why? Because they cared enough about the riches to acquire them, and maintaining them costs time and attention. Further, in having wealth the rich do not acutely feel the need to enter the Kingdom. The assuage the sense that something is missing in their lives with material comforts, using their wealth to drug themselves to the emptiness in their hearts. This, it would seem, applies to us today more than it could have to anyone in the time of Jesus. The rich in those days were able to secure for themselves some measure of comfort. But we today can easily provide for ourselves uninterrupted entertainment and pleasure.
Again I say to you,
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.
We are camels much too large to pass through the needle's eye. Without help, we too will go away sad like the rich young man with his many possessions. Left to ourselves we prove all too likely to choose what we have now and the life with know over the sacrifice and risk that the Kingdom often entails. We may vaguely perceive that there is some great good to be had on the far side of such a sacrifice. But it will seem to us something that only saints attain and not even a real possibility for us. We will think this just as well, for we are comfortable here, with our stuff, with our safe routines, with no need to ever experience the pain of privation that comes when we sacrifice a lesser good for a greater one.
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said,
“Who then can be saved?”
The disciples were still struggling to overcome their worldly image of success. To them blessing entailed riches. They still imagined that the Messianic Kingdom was going to consist of wealth and might in the same way as any other kingdom but to a greater degree. The idea that it was a Kingdom more suited more to the poor than to the rich challenged that paradigm. Could such a Kingdom even exist? Did not a Kingdom in fact need material wealth? And if there could be such a Kingdom who would be able to enter? If it took such a different relationship to the things of this world to enter the Kingdom of heaven, could anyone in fact be saved?
Jesus looked at them and said,
“For men this is impossible,
but for God all things are possible.”
On our own we tend to prefer ourselves to others and to God. Our egos remain in the drivers seat and only take detours into charity, service, or worship, when such detours seem scenic and the main road seems congested with traffic. In short, even our charity is in some measure self-serving. We are limited and finite creatures, and we are tainted by the concupiscence. We don't say it out loud but we still struggle with a part of ourselves that says, "A god am I! I occupy a godly throne in the heart of the sea!" We need a need relation to God and ourselves that is not something we ourselves can create. But it is something God can do and desires to do. The rich cannot themselves pass through the eye of the needle. But God can transform the rich and make them poor in Spirit, himself bringing them home to his Kingdom. When we resist this process we struggle unnecessarily. In response, God is willing to let us experience even "the most barbarous of nations" if the end result is that we learn to trust him more than ourselves.
“We have given up everything and followed you.
What will there be for us?”
When we begin to value what Jesus values more than what the world values we too will begin to experience the spiritual riches and the great abundance with which the Kingdom is filled. We will benefit from the wise governance of the bishops who succeeded the apostles on their twelve thrones. We will receive a new and transnational family in the Church. We will receive the "hundred times more" that is the grace of the Holy Spirit poured out in the Sacraments and charisms. And finally, we will attain that which alone is true success for any individual, "eternal life".
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