Peace be with you. Friends, our first reading from
the book of Wisdom and our Gospel
are meant to be read in tandem. And they articulate such an important principle
of what I'll call spiritual physics. So anybody interested in the
dynamics of the spiritual life, we've got to attend
to these readings. They have to do with the play,
if I can put it this way, between worldly goods, riches,
and wisdom. So look now
in the first reading, which is taken from
the book of Wisdom. And traditionally Solomon
himself is seen as the author of this book. So the paradigmatic wise figure
from the Old Testament enunciates these various
principles. So listen now to what he says: "I pleaded, and the spirit
of wisdom came to me. I preferred her to
scepter and throne, and deemed riches nothing
in comparison to her, nor did I liken any
priceless gem to her; because all gold,
in view of her, is a little sand." Now, it's an
extraordinary thing. Again, imagine Solomon is the speaker of this, Solomon. Look in the first book of
Kings in the Old Testament. There's no king in Israel who had greater wealth, riches, and power
than Solomon. He's presented as the greatest of the kings of Israel. They actually enumerate
for us the amount of wealth and coinage and gold
and everything. Solomon had every worldly thing
you could want. But again, "I pleaded," so he's saying,
"I asked God, and wisdom came to me, and
I thought that was better than scepter and throne—that means
all the power I've got— and I deemed riches
nothing in comparison to her. So even all this pile of wealth of mine means nothing
compared to wisdom." Now, what's he talking about
when he says wisdom? He doesn't just mean scientific knowledge. That's maybe part of it, but wisdom in the Bible means seeing life from the
perspective of God. It means having an intimacy
with God by which I now understand the world
and live my life. That's this highest value that Solomon
properly sees as greater than any of the goods
in the world. I always think here
of the great French Catholic philosopher
Blaise Pascal. He made the distinction between the goods of the body, the goods of the mind, and the goods of the heart. Well, the goods of the body,
those are all these things that wealth can buy, all the pleasures
of the world, the nice place to live and clothes and
sensual pleasure, etc. Okay, fine. Good in themselves. But we're not meant to
be stuck at that level. Rather, we become beguiled
eventually by the goods of the mind that transcend any of the goods of the body, when you fall in love with
philosophy and with mathematics and with the higher sciences
and you realize they bring you into a
more refined world. My favorite story here
is always the one told of Thomas Aquinas as he and a few Dominican
brothers were approaching the city of Paris,
which would've been one of the most glorious cities in the civilization of that time, and they saw the towers and turrets
of the city before them. And one of the brothers said,
"Ah, what wouldn't you give
to have Paris?" And Aquinas reportedly said, "I'd much rather have Chrysostom's commentary
on Matthew." That's somebody
who's risen above the mere preoccupation
of the goods of the body and has become open now
to the goods of the mind. But beyond even those,
Pascal said, are the goods of the heart. That means those values
associated with God. Now, that's the wisdom
Solomon's talking about. Once he'd been brought into that
world of value, he realized that everything else, all the power
and wealth of the world, even the goods of the mind, are nothing compared to these highest goods,
compared to wisdom. Okay, so that's one principle
of spiritual physics, but here's an interesting
one, related one. Listen now. "Yet all good things
come together and come to me
in her company, and countless riches
at her hand." Now, here's the principle. When you have wisdom, you see the world
from God's perspective, you've reached
this highest level. Then you'll know
what to do with the wealth that's
been given to you. Suppose you've been given worldly
power, worldly wealth. Okay. If you've got wisdom, then you know what to do with
them. They come together. They make sense. It's not a strict either/or, like I simply have to eschew
all those things. No, I must first move into the realm of wisdom
and then I'll know what to do with the goods of the world. Okay. So with that, or maybe those two
principles in mind, now we look at the Gospel,
which is this marvelous story of the rich young man. I don't know if it's true for you,
but it's been for me a story that has long
intrigued me, troubled me, beguiled me, bugged me, and that's always a sign to me
of a deep spiritual truth being conveyed, when it kind of gets into us. What do we hear now? Well, there's this wealthy young man.
I always imagine him as, I don't know, seventeen,
eighteen, years old. Described as wealthy
so he's, he's got many of the goods
of the world, and he comes to Jesus. "Good teacher, what
must I do to inherit eternal life?" Now notice something
first of all. This is a very good sign, that though he's got all the
goods of the world, he implicitly knows
they're not enough. I mean, otherwise,
why would he bother with this itinerant preacher? Why would he come running up
to this spiritual teacher and ask about eternal life? He must intuit that the goods of the world,
no matter how great they are, are not eternal, they don't satisfy the deepest
longings of the heart. He has to know that.
And that's a good thing. And he comes up to Jesus
with the question. How does Jesus respond? Well, you know
the commandments, and he enumerates
some of them. You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal,
etc. Okay. What's the first step
toward wisdom, toward the highest value,
toward eternal life? Well, first you got to eliminate
from your life all those sins that stand in the
way of attaining this level. If wisdom, life on high with God,
means a life of love ultimately, well then you've got
to get rid of those egregious violations
of love in your life. You can't be stealing
people's goods. You can't be killing people. You can't
be committing adultery. These are fundamental
violations of love. It's like someone
learning a sport. You've got to get the
fundamentals in place. You have to eliminate these really basic
problems that you have. So, okay. There's the first step. And the kid says, "Teacher, all these I have
observed from my youth." Okay. I don't
disbelieve him. There's a sign that
he's spiritually serious. He's coming to Jesus asking
for eternal life. And, okay, I've covered the basics. I've eliminated these
egregious violations of love. And I think Jesus,
reading his heart, senses that he's being
honest because he says, "Looking at him,
he loved him and said, 'You are lacking one thing. Go, sell what you have,
and give it to the poor and you will have
treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.'" We're at a very pivotal
place in the Gospel right now. He's a good kid.
He's good. He has a good instinct, asking Jesus about
eternal life. He's not just stuck at
the level of the body. He's done
a lot of the basics. He's covered the basic ground. And Jesus knows that. So now he's saying, "Okay, if you are ready for the
high-octane spiritual life, you're ready for real wisdom,
for real communion with God, then you got to
sell what you've got. Give it to the poor and come after me." It's time for a
radical choice. It's time for a
radical move. See, what's he sensing? I think this is the pivot
of this story, the fulcrum of it, that though his instincts
are right, they're good, Jesus knows this kid is still
too drawn to that world. He's still got a tendency to get
stuck in the goods of the world, power and pleasure and riches. So, okay. Make the move, make the move, set those things aside
and follow me to the heights. And I don't know, for my money, one of the very saddest
lines in the whole Bible, because it's so rare in the Gospels that
Jesus calls someone and the person doesn't respond. Almost in every other case. Like Matthew—"Matthew,
follow me," and he got up that minute
and followed him. The sons of Zebedee—
"Come, follow me,” and they left their nets
and they followed him. Peter—"Leave me.
I'm a sinful man." "No, you'll be a fisher of men."
And he followed him. Then there's this story. "At that statement,
his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had
many possessions." Think of Pascal again—
body, mind, heart. This kid, who's got the
goods of the body, but he's being drawn upward. He is. That's why he's seeking
eternal life from Jesus. That's why he's been following
the commandments. He's being drawn upward. But at the decisive moment,
he's like the Israelites having
escaped from Egypt, but then they begin to long
for the flesh pots of Egypt. "Oh, how we had leeks
and we had soup and we had meat
back in Egypt." They start longing
for the old life. And so, at the decisive moment, he's being summoned by Christ
himself to the heights, is he feels himself drawn back to this place of
safety and comfort. Listen to Jesus now. "How hard it is
for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! . . . Children how hard it is
to enter the kingdom of God!" Now this is not like a
blanket condemnation of wealthy people.
Don't read it that way. But it's an honest
assessment of the dynamics of the
spiritual physics. It's hard breaking free of the allurement
of the body to move to the next level
of the mind. It's hard to break free
from that level to get to the level
of the heart, which is total
surrender to God. That's wisdom. Compared to that,
all the goods of the world are like sand, said Solomon,
correctly. Ah, but watch something,
watch something, read the first book of Kings.
Solomon, even the wisest
of Israel's kings, falls back into the goods of the body
and the goods of the world. Okay. That's where most of us are,
everybody. We sinners. We come up to Jesus.
We want eternal life. That's why you're listening to
this sermon. I know that. That's why I'm preaching it.
I mean, we want eternal life. We know the basics.
We know the commandments have got to be followed. But then every single one
of us right now, everyone listening to me
right now, you're hearing
that voice of Jesus. "Leave behind these goods
of the world. Come, follow me, and
you'll have treasure in heaven." Okay. What will it be? God bless you. Thanks so much
for watching. If you enjoyed this video,
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