MANY PEOPLE TODAY set great store on having or acquiring wealth. Bookstores are full of books on how to get rich quickly, on how to make millions by investing in the right place at the right time. Probably many Catholics see nothing wrong with this. Many of us regularly buy lottery tickets and wonder what we would do with a windfall of a couple million dollars, pounds or whatever. And provided I keep the commandments, provided I am a morally good person, what's wrong with being rich?

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Complacency challenged

Today's reading is a challenge to such complacency. We are in that part of Mark's Gospel where Jesus is unfolding to his disciples his vision, his Way. Significantly, we are told at the beginning that Jesus was "setting out on a journey", literally, that he was setting out on the road or the way. That way is leading to Jerusalem, to his suffering, death, resurrection and is a way which his followers are expected to follow. Jesus himself is the Way and to be with him is to be on the Way to life.

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What is holiness?

As he sets out, Jesus is approached by a rich man. [Only Matthew describes him as 'young'; Luke calls him a 'ruler'.] He wants to know what he should do "to inherit eternal life", that is, to win the ultimate reward of a good life. Obviously he is a morally good person. For him, religion and therefore holiness consisted in being a morally good person in the eyes of God. He told Jesus that he kept all the commandments and most probably he said this in all sincerity. (How many of us can do the same?!) But it seems he saw this observance as an indication of his own personal achievement. He was not really concerned with the needs of those around him. Somehow one has the impression that all the emphasis was on himself and his own individual perfection. He kept all the rules, he was free from sin. As some might say today, he was "in a state of grace".

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Something missing

In what state of mind did he approach Jesus? Did he suspect that maybe there was something missing from his life? Or did he just want to feel confirmed in his lifestyle and get a pat on the back? "Well done, good and faithful servant." After all, he had said he kept the commandments since his earliest days. If so, he was in for a slight disappointment.

Mark tells us that Jesus looked at the man "with love". This was not an erotic love, a love of desire; on the contrary, it was the love of agape pronounced a-ga-pay , a love that reaches out in concern for the deepest well being of the other. It is the kind of love that the Gospel asks us to extend to every single person ("love one another as I have loved you"). And it was this love for the man that leads to the challenge Jesus is going to make. This man was good; Jesus wanted him to be even better.

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A bluff called

Did Jesus' answer come as a surprise to the man? Jesus told him that keeping the commandments was not quite enough. "There is one thing lacking. Sell all you have and give to the poor, and then you will have real treasure. After that, come and be with me." His bluff had been called. The true nature of his "religion" was revealed. He loved God not unconditionally but on his terms. He was truly shocked at Jesus' words. His wealth meant more to him than being perfect or gaining true life.

In fact, it had never dawned on him that his wealth was anything but a sign of God's blessing. It was the conventional thinking of the time but Jesus was offering a new vision, a new wine which needed new wineskins, new thinking. And the man did not rise to the challenge. He walked slowly and sadly away. He could not see that wealth was not something to be owned but to be shared. You cannot love God unless you love your brother and sister in need.

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Shocked disciples

But Jesus' disciples were equally shocked. The challenge of Jesus was totally contrary to their own beliefs. Material wealth and prosperity were signs of God's blessings. The perfect man was indeed one who both kept the law and was wealthy. A clear example is in the Book of Job. He showed his loyalty to God by being ready to lose everything without complaint but in the end he was rewarded by getting it all back and more.

Jesus turns all this on its head. "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!" And, we are told, the disciples did not know what he was talking about. If it is more difficult for a rich man to enter God's Kingdom, "Who then can be saved?" they ask.

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What is wealth?

To be wealthy, by definition, means having more, in fact, a lot more than other people. Someone has said that modern society is divided between the Haves, the Have-Nots and the Have-Lots. And wealth is a very relative term. In practice, it means living in a society where the goods of this world are very unevenly distributed with the inevitable result that some do not have even what they need. It means living in a society where people want to have a larger and larger share of a limited cake, leading to ruthless competitiveness and survival of the strongest.

Most developed countries fall into this category. So much wealth side by side with so much poverty and all the evils that both poverty and wealth breed. When the Brazilian Paolo Freire wrote his book "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed" he was speaking both about the poor and the wealthy. Both are trapped in a destructive system. This cannot be the Kingdom of God. That cannot be the kind of society that the Gospel vision proposes. It cannot be the kind of society that Christians support. For us, it is an obscenity to think of wealth as God's blessing and poverty as God's punishment.

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Is money the only problem?

However, before those in the tax-burdened middle class begin to feel smug, they should realise that the focus of the story is not just about material wealth, about money. The man was really being asked to let go of something to which he was deeply attached. In the case of many, it may not be money or material goods. It may be a person, a lover, a thing I own, my job, a place, my health, my reputation...

I am not fully a disciple of Jesus -- whether I am keeping the commandments or not - if there is any thing or any person in my life that I am not prepared to let go of. My following of Jesus has to be totally and absolutely unconditional. "I will follow you wherever you go, I will do whatever you ask me to do, I will give up anything that you want... if that is necessary for me to prove my love for You or for any other person."

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To be more rather than have more

It is very important, though, to realise that, in asking us to let go, Jesus is inviting us to have more and to be more. By letting go we will find something far better and more rewarding to take its place. This is precisely the meaning of the last paragraph of today's Gospel.

It is a vision of a truly Christian community where personal wealth is totally irrelevant because my security is centred in a deeply caring community. For all the attachments I let go of I will find replacements in abundance - new homes providing a warm hospitality, new brothers and sisters and mothers, unlimited access to all I need for my life. And all this not in some future 'heaven' but here and now.

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Real treasure

Here is the Wisdom that the First Reading speaks of. Something to be esteemed more than "sceptres and thrones...compared with her, all gold is a pinch of sand, and beside her silver ranks as mud". Something to be loved "more than health or beauty" because "in her company all good things came to me...riches not to be numbered". For what can be valued more than what brings me love, security, freedom and happiness?

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A two-edged sword

And the words of the Second Reading, too, find a perfect illustration in this Gospel scene. "The word of God is something alive and active: it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finally: it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow." This Gospel story, like many others, cuts through all our conventional ways of thinking and drives us to reflect on the things that really matter and where real wealth and blessings lie.

Can we have the courage to take the Gospel seriously and really try to build such a sharing community? Can we imagine Jesus concerned about a 'desirable' home, of having a Mercedes or a BMW, of designer clothes, playing the stock market, a string of credit cards, muttering into a mobile phone, with Gucci bags and Bally shoes? Jesus only had the clothes on his back and not even a permanent home.

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The wealth of Jesus

But Jesus was not a poor person. There was never anyone more wealthy than he. But his wealth was all in his own person: his character and personality, his vision of life, his total freedom, his integrity, his being always totally himself, his ability to love unconditionally the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, his total indifference to position, reputation or status.

To be totally a disciple of Jesus is not to give up something valuable; on the contrary it is to find the secret of real happiness and wealth. The man in the Gospel story never did discover just how much he lost by walking away.