TUESDAY AUGUST 20, 2024
TUESDAY OF THE TWENTIETH WEEK OF THE ORDINARY TIME B
ST BERNARD, Abb. (MEMORIAL)
Ezekiel 28: 1-10
Matthew 19:23-30
THE VALUE OF HUMAN WEALTH AND SUCCESS AGAINST ETERNAL VALUES
Wealth, material possessions and other human successes that bring pleasure, happiness and enjoyment are not evil in themselves. But they are capable of wholly and overly derailing and preoccupying the mind of man and turning man against the eternal values that he should always strive for.
In the gospel of today, Jesus warns us against these tendencies of being derailed and consumed by the spirit of acquisition and worldly successes. Jesus foresees the hardness and the impossibility of the rich to enter into heaven. He compares it with the Camel passing through the eye of a needle. Literally, it is not possible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, but we can assume this saying as a figure of speech that describes the situation in Israel that is well known to them. It is a situation in which the camel which is an animal used to transport loads and large items. But the Camel must have to be striped of all these load at a point in Israel before it can actually pass through the gate described as the eye of a needle into Israelites land.
This situation as known by every Jew is used to describe how important it is never to trust or be overloaded with material possession to enter the kingdom of God. It is only the person who can make the sacrifices of being detached from material possessions that deserve the rewards of heaven.
And Peter presses further to know the exact rewards that awaits those who eventually makes these sacrifices. And Jesus assures him that the sacrifices has great rewards. He tells him, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.”
In essence, what does the Lord require of us? The prophet Ezekiel makes this very explicit. He does not condemn the blessings of wealth and material possession. Rather God condemns certain attitudes that tends to make us gods and oppressive because of our ownership of them. It condemns the exchange of the values of material possession for eternal values. These wealth are suppose to be at our service not for our peril. We are supposed to master them not to be imprisoned by them.
It must not divide humanity but is intended to unity humanity and help our attainment of eternal values. So it is basically our attitude towards these wealth and human successes that draws us away and makes us enemies of our salvation.
We must stop thinking as described by Ezekiel in the first reading when he says, “Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,’ yet you are but a man, and no god, though you consider yourself as wise as a god.”
Let us put material wealth and human successes in proper perspective as means to serve others and not as end to self aggrandizement. It becomes means when we stop worshipping them, or being consumed by them as to take over our lives, our time, our preoccupations and follow them at all cost. We must abhor the instinct of being overblown by our ownership of them as to making us arrogant, insensitive to others and proud.
Rather when material gifts is seen as tool to serve others, and is acquired for the good of all in the right way. When it is viewed as a gift of God for the service of humanity and used as such without attachment to it, and the widows, orphans and destitute becomes beneficiaries of our wealth and services, like mother Theresa did, then we become agents of blessings to our world. And the rewards promised Peter and the Apostles will be reserved for us.
So our attitude and disposition to them counts alot and makes the difference. Our task is to strive towards eternal values. We must never be carried away by the glamour or the beauty and allurements of wealth and human successes. They must be appropriated as gifts to aid our eternal salvation
Heavenly Father, may the blessings of human successes and material possessions aid our eternal salvation. May they never rule, bloat or make us arrogant, proud or insensitive to our fellow human. May your Holy Spirit rule our lives and help us to appropriate all our human wealth and successes to the attainment of eternal salvation and heavenly blessing through Christ our Lord
Fr Norbert Uchuno
