Archbishop’s Journal
Archbishop George H. Niederauer delivered the following homily at Saint Brendan Church in San Francisco Oct. 11 at the Installation Mass for new pastor Father Daniel Nascimento.
Mark Twain’s hero, Huckleberry Finn, said on one occasion: “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me – it’s the parts I do understand.” We know what Huck means: Jesus challenges us in what he says, challenges our assumptions about life, challenges our values and the priorities we set, challenges the ways we live out our lives. Today’s gospel story from Mark is one of those passages that bother us, if we understand it.
The rich young man is impressed and excited by Jesus as a teacher, and he asks Jesus what he must do to share everlasting life – to go to heaven. Jesus tells him he already knows the commandments and should obey them. The man persists with his questions, saying that he has obeyed God’s commandments all his life, and asking what more he should do.
Jesus admires the young man’s good will. Obeying the commandments will help us to avoid evil and will gain respectability with our neighbors. But there’s more to following Jesus than just avoiding evil and being respectable. Living by the rules is necessary, but it’s not enough. Jesus calls his followers not only to avoid evil but also to do good, to make sacrifices in order to make a difference by the love we show to God and to one another.
So Jesus lovingly calls the young man to sell what he owns, give it to the poor, and follow him as one of his full-time disciples. Sadly, the young man turns away, because he can’t choose Jesus over his money and what it will buy. He wants to be good, but he doesn’t want it badly enough; he doesn’t want to make sacrifices to live the life Jesus calls him to.
Jesus doesn’t just let this sad moment pass. He draws a lesson for his followers by saying, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” The apostles can’t believe their ears, so Jesus repeats himself: “It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Maybe you don’t understand how insane that statement sounded to Peter and the others. It was a moral earthquake. Religious Jews in the time of Jesus assumed that wealth was a proof of good character and a sign that someone was one of God’s favorites. Some Christians even today have thoughts like these. But these thoughts go directly against the teaching of Jesus Christ. Why? Is Jesus condemning having money, and the things it will buy? No, but Jesus is warning us that the things we have can fix our hearts on having them, rather than on God’s love and will for us. Prosperity tests a person at least as powerfully as adversity does: we know that success can make us proud, arrogant, selfish, worldly and snobbish, just as surely as failure can make us depressed and desperate and bitter.
The second reading for today, from the Letter to the Hebrews, praises the power of the word of God: it says that God’s word makes things happen in our lives, if we listen to the word and put it to work. God’s word wakes up our souls to what matters most, and what doesn’t. Today, God’s word, spoken by Jesus in the gospel, has told us: “Be careful. Don’t put your trust only in money and what it can buy. Instead put your trust in Jesus and the Father who sent him.”
A “rich young man” these days is not only someone with lots of money in the bank or lots of stocks and bonds. A young man is rich with time, the years of his life that probably stretch before him for decades and decades. A young man is rich in the health and energy and enthusiasm that equip him for life. A young man is also rich in the gifts and skills and talents God has given him. So a young man has to choose: he can use these gifts only to serve himself and his own interests, or he can share them and use them in the service of God and of others.
In every generation since Jesus Christ, young men have heard the Lord’s call and shared themselves and their gifts in service as priests in the Catholic Church. Father Daniel Nascimento is such a man. I am proud and delighted to install him as your new pastor here at St. Brendan’s Parish. Though I have been Archbishop for less than four years, I know what you are already finding out: Father Daniel has said “yes” to Jesus Christ in priesthood and now generously lives out that “yes” day by day. I challenge all of you to support Father Daniel’s “yes” with your encouragement, your cooperation, your love and your prayers.
Jesus makes a promise to everyone who trusts him in that way. At the end of the gospel reading, Jesus tells Peter – and tells us – that whatever we sacrifice for him and for our faith in him will return to us a hundred fold in this life – along with persecution too – and in the age to come, eternal life. Yes, persecution too, because living the life of a faithful Catholic Christian is like swimming upstream, against the current. It is hard to do lots of the time, and other people may laugh at us or get angry because we act different and try to make a difference.
We are all called to follow Jesus Christ as his disciples, to let his life and teaching influence all we say and do. That is hard to do, but with God’s grace it can be done. Most Catholics answer this call from Christ and live it out in marriage and family life. Some men and women are called to priesthood and religious life, to follow Christ full-time in service to the kingdom of God. That’s how the rich young man was called.
Jesus gave himself completely for the young man, and he called him to give himself completely as well. Jesus is not a compromiser: he didn’t say, “Go, sell half of all you own, put it into a blind trust, and follow me for six months to see how you like it.” No, instead Jesus said: “Go, sell all you have, give it to the poor, then you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.”
Once upon a time you may have given some thought to such a vocation, but maybe then you quickly said to yourself, “Oh, I could never do that!” No, you could not - by yourself. But Jesus doesn’t call you to follow and serve him by yourself. He calls you the same way he called Peter and the others, to be his companion and a companion to the others following him. Take my word for it, and Father Daniel’s word too: such a call is to a happy life. It is a gift. It’s just as Jesus says in the gospel today, “For men it is impossible, but not for God. For God all things are possible.”
By Archbishop George H. Niederauer
From October 16, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
