Homily for SPP SD SJ on the 28th Sunday OT B 10/13/2024
Wisdom 7:7-11 / Psalm 90 / Hebrew 4:12-13 / Mark 10:17-30
Again this morning I am going to attempt a short homily to give you time for the survey in your pews.
In the last 10 days I've had 4 funerals, three at St. Josephs and 1 priest funeral in Waterloo. In the next 6 days I have 3 more at St. Joseph’s and another priest's funeral in Waukon, Fr. John Moser died very unexpectedly at the age of 64. We've lost 7 priests this year, 7 active priests, not retired, it's been a rough year.
Anyway, these deaths are heavy on my mind when reflecting on these readings. I mean, what's it all about? In the end none of the material stuff matters. We can’t take it with us, and often it just prevents us from following the Lord more closely.
In our second reading we heard, “No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account.” At our death we will all have to render an account of how we lived and how we helped people with our wealth.
If we had to render that account right now, what is it in our lives that we could give up to follow Jesus more closely? The rich young man had all these possessions and they were just holding him back from following God. Having wealth isn’t bad until it holds us back or prevents us from trusting in God, we just begin to trust in ourselves.
God loves us and wants us to trust in Him as His children. Jesus calls His disciples that in this passage. Children are good at trusting, as we get older, we don’t trust, especially if we have wealth, we trust in ourselves. But God is calling us to trust Him. Why? Because He loves us.
There’s a beautiful line in this Gospel passage, it says, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him” - Jesus loved Him, He said this to Him because He loved Him and wanted Him to know the best way to inherit eternal life.
God always wants a closer relationship with us, and when we go to Him, like this rich young man did and ask what we can do to inherit eternal life when we die, God is going to tell us, we are going to know in our heart what we need to do.