Discipleship: A call to live close to God and one another!
Discipleship: A call to live close to God and one another!
During Respect Life Month, we pray for life—life from womb to tomb. This weekend, we celebrate Inclusion Awareness Day. We celebrate life with our abilities and disabilities, our strengths and weaknesses. Inclusion Awareness Sunday is an opportunity to reflect on how we include everyone by looking at our abilities rather than our disabilities. How do we celebrate our differences?
Father Henri Nouwen laid the spiritual foundation for the Pathways Awareness Open Hearts, Open Minds movement with his keynote address, "The Vulnerable Journey" at the 1996 Pathways Awareness Inclusion in Worship Conference. He remarked, "I was always studying about God and teaching about God to all these bright students. I wanted to be smarter than others. I wanted to show them that I could be "with it". And I suddenly realized that it is not in strength and power that God was coming to me, but in weakness."
God is the power of inclusion. He opened his arms and heart on the cross to embrace everyone. So Jesus invites us to open our hearts, minds, and doors to people with all abilities and differences. Change needs to start in our minds and hearts. Are we ready to accept the differences, at least in our mentality? It is not an easy task. Let us meditate on the depth of the word “Inclusion” and connect with our faith.
This weekend's readings put in front of us a question: “What are the most important things in our lives?” The first reading, Solomon, was a model for Christian disciples, who prayed for wisdom above everything else. Solomon was not born with great wisdom; rather, God gave him it. In the 1 King chapter 3, Solomon prays for wisdom. He says, “Give your servant, therefore, a listening heart to judge your people and to distinguish between good and evil. For who can give judgment for this vast people of yours?” (9). And God told him, “I give you a heart so wise and discerning that there has never been anyone like you until now, nor after you will there be anyone to equal you” (1 King 3:12). Wisdom is an eager desire to do God’s will and give him glory.
In the Gospel, we read the account of the rich young man and the difficulty of the rich entering the kingdom. Jesus reaffirms the need to keep the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17). The young man claimed he was keeping the Commandments from his youth. Then Jesus invites him to go further, “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." Jesus taught that a wholehearted spirit of poverty is necessary to be a faithful follower of him. Jesus told the young man to detach from his possessions and stay close to Jesus. We read that he went away sorrowful. St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “Our hearts are restless, Lord, until we rest in you.” The true happiness is coming from God. Solomon, in the first reading, states that he considers wisdom from God more than anything else.
Jesus uses the analogy of the camel and the eye of a needle to describe an impossible situation. In those days, there was a low and narrow gate for pedestrians to go through after hours, which was called the eye of the needle. The camels were rather taller animals and were heavily loaded with goods and riders. They would need to be unloaded in order to pass through. Therefore, the analogy is that a rich man would have to similarly unload his material possessions to enter heaven.
Then we may ask, do we have any chance? Do I have to be a monk and live on the street? It is more than selling everything and living on the street. If you can, do it. But it is more about internal disposition. We need possessions, but it should not be an obstacle to our discipleship. Christ taught that the wholehearted spirit of poverty is necessary to be a faithful follower of him. While man has kept the commandments, true perfection requires total detachment. We need to place Christ above everything else. We are utterly incapable of reaching salvation on our own. We need divine assistance. We need to open ourselves to God’s grace.
The celebration of the Eucharist gives us the true spirit of poverty. In the Eucharist, he comes to us in true poverty and shares with us his very life: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Let us approach him with the true spirit of poverty to receive him in Holy Communion. He wants us to go out and be his flesh and blood for others.