Readings (Year B):
Wisdom 7:7 – 11
Psalms 90:12 – 13, 14 – 15, 16 – 17
Hebrews 4:12 – 13
Mark 10:17 – 30 or 10:17 – 27
Reflection: Jesus invites us to trust
We sing and shout for joy with the psalmist! We trust that when we prefer wisdom above all else, it will be given to us. These passages would be enough for a lifetime of prayer to guide us on our journey to eternal life. Jesus brings these sacred scriptures into clear focus today and reminds us that our journey to eternal life is one of radical reorientation.
Jesus sets out on a journey with his disciples. Eager to inherit eternal life, a man runs up and kneels before Jesus. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s an honest question and a good one to ask ourselves. While we make a good beginning by following the commandments, Jesus says there is more. Jesus invites us to leave our sense of security behind so that we can journey together in a community of disciples who learn to love well together.
This is the path to eternal life, and it requires one thing. Not more rules or commands, but surrender. It requires letting go of the ways we have related to things and to people in the past so that we can discover new family—a family of faith wider and deeper and more diverse in culture, perspective, and in even faithful expressions of spirituality than we could have imagined.
The author of Hebrews reminds us, “Everything is naked and exposed to God.” We are vulnerable before God, and Christ invites us to be vulnerable before one another in the community of disciples, to surrender and learn to trust. This is a radical reorientation for most of us.
This is the gift that is being offered at this very moment in our life together as church. Bishops and delegates are gathered in Rome for the second session of the Synod on Synodality. The synod itself will soon end. But the invitation to become a church that learns to journey well together in a widening communion and a deeper participation of all the baptized and that sends us in mission is only beginning.
This is nothing new. It is the invitation of Jesus Christ. And, it is a re-orientation for many of us. Accepting this invitation begins with daily acts of prudent and patient listening, of seeking to understand one another as human beings rather than the labels we ascribe to one another.
It begins each day with kindness. It begins with trusting the gifts God has given one another—the gifts of clergy and laity, of women, of young people; the gifts of every culture and tongue and orientation; the gifts the Spirit pours out. It begins with listening and surrendering to the wisdom we encounter in one another.
We have a beautiful invitation before us to embrace the journey together to eternal life. I pray that we have the courage to respond by preferring nothing to Christ and God’s holy wisdom guiding our path.
Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
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