It is easier for a camel to go through the eye....

Fr. Vincent Hawkswell

“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” Jesus says in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.... For mortals it is impossible, but not for God....”

I take “wealth” to include any possessions whatsoever, not just those that only “rich” people can afford. Besides, we are all, in Canada, rich compared to the “poorest of the poor.”

If we want to enter the kingdom of heaven the safest thing, Jesus said, is for us to sell what we own, give the money to the poor, and then go and follow Him.

This must be the wisdom the First Reading talks about, which is to be preferred to sceptres and thrones, in comparison with which all wealth is “as nothing.”

Along with this wisdom, the First Reading says, “all good things came to me”; in her hands was “uncounted wealth.” Yes; for if we follow Christ God will give us nothing less than Himself.

Notice, however, that this was Jesus’s second answer to the man’s question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” His first answer was, “You know the commandments.”

I presume, therefore, that we do not all have to sell everything we own and give the money to the poor in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Nevertheless, if it is as difficult as Jesus says, we should take care to learn the proper attitude to wealth.  

Poor in spirit
Just before Hitler took over Austria in 1938, he forbade all tourist traffic into the country. This had serious financial repercussions, and Commander Georg von Trapp, whose story was told in The Sound of Music, took all his money out of English banks to bolster the small family bank of one of his friends. The bank failed anyway and the von Trapps lost all their money.

In her book, Maria von Trapp describes their reaction.
“You wanted to help somebody in a difficult situation, didn’t you?” she said to Georg. “Don’t you remember that it says whatever we do for love of Him, He will reward us a hundredfold in this life, and on top of it we get life everlasting?”

“The ‘hundredfold reward’ set in almost immediately with the reaction of the children,” she said: “their complete unconcern as to whether we had a car or not, their unrestrained willingness to take over new duties, new responsibilities, and this not in an attitude of suffering and resignation, but with rolled-up shirt sleeves.”

Then Hitler’s navy offered von Trapp command of one of the new submarines. Compared to the one he had had in the First World War, it was a dream, but he decided he could not work for Hitler.

Next the oldest son Rupert, who had just graduated from medical school, was offered a prestigious post in a big hospital in Vienna. He refused, because the job meant performing immoral operations.

Finally the whole family, who were now earning their living by singing, were invited to sing for Hitler’s birthday. It would assure their future success, but all the children said no.

Maria was so delighted that she ran to her husband and hugged him till he could hardly breathe. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “You act as if you had made a million dollars.”

“Oh, much more!” she said. “I have just found out that we were not really rich; we just happened to have a lot of money.... I am so happy to know that we don’t belong to those for whom it is so hard to enter the kingdom of God.”

They were poor in spirit: they put God ahead of worldly riches, even to the point of giving them up when He asked it.

Are you a consumerist?
In recent years, especially since the fall of communism, Pope John Paul II has warned us repeatedly against consumerism.

Father Paul Schmidt, director of priests for the Diocese of Oakland, Calif., says it is not consumerism to seek the necessities of life, nor is it consumerism to enjoy the good things of life. It is not consumerism to want to provide good and useful things for those we love.

However, he says, we are “consumerists” when our consumption of extras deprives someone else of necessities, when we compulsively acquire things we do not need, when we can think of nothing else to do with leisure time than go to the mall, when Sundays and holy days are seen as opportunities to shop, when we feel we cannot live without the latest thing we see advertised, when we are not content with what we can afford, when we are jealous of those who have more than we have and when we say we “cannot afford” to share.

In general, he said, we are “consumerists” when wisdom is replaced with the dictates of television commercials, when education is seen as nothing more than a ticket to a good job, and when personal worth is measured by the size of a bank account.

To counteract consumerism in yourself, he suggested, practise acts of generosity and self-denial.

When we die, and it is certain that we are all going to, we must “render an account” to God, before Whom “no creature is hidden,” as the Second Reading says. Part of that account will be an evaluation of our stewardship of the goods of this world.