The temperaments and lives of these new saints could not have been any different. Yet, their commonality, is certainly their love and obedience to Jesus Christ.
Like the young man in the Gospel today, they each approached the Lord, fell to their knees and asked the question: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” For three of them it was founding a religious order for ordinary men and women like you and me to live a life of prayer and penance that points to God. For Archbishop Romero, it was standing up to a corrupt government. For Paul VI it was leading the Church in a time of social and cultural upheaval. But, “what must I do to find joy, to find eternal life?” That is probably the most important question anyone could ask.
One concern I know many priests and many of you have is that so many of our young people and so many of our family members do not consider this question important. One of the symptoms of the secularism of our age is an indifference to eternity. Plenty of young men and women ask questions like, “what must I do to get into Harvard, what must I do to be a famous athlete, what must I do to make my first million by the age of 30, what must I do to have as much pleasure as I can?” These are all valid questions if one is merely concerned with earthly happiness and temporal success. But these are not concerns about ultimate reality. So this young man in the Gospel is in a much better place than many of our contemporaries.
How did the Lord answer this young man’s questions? He first begins to list off the commandments of God’s law.
Rules are important. We have rules for good health—you can’t eat a bag of pork rinds every day if you want to be physically fit; we have rules for good finances—don’t spend more than you make. So, too, if you want to have good mental health, there are some rules—learn to let go of anger and grudges, read a book once and a while to keep your brain active, maintain supportive relationships, develop a sense of gratitude for life’s blessings.
Every relationship has rules; rules which prescribe what is good and prohibit what is bad. When a bride and groom stand up in front of the Church and their families and recite their wedding vows, they are agreeing to the rules of their covenant relationship: we are going to be faithful even when we are tempted to be unfaithful, we are going to care for each other in times of sickness, in times of economic hardship, when physical beauty fades, we are going to raise our children to be good Christians.
Families have rules which support the harmony and happiness of the family. Don’t talk back to mom and dad, don’t fight with your siblings. When I was growing up, we had a lot of rules about keeping the house tidy: make your bed, clean your room, dirty plates and dishes weren’t to be left lying around, they were to be placed not just in the kitchen sink, but the dishwasher, and they had to be rinsed off first.
The spiritual life has rules, too. If you want to spiritually fit, if you want your relationship with God to be healthy—if you want this earthly journey to lead to eternal life with God, we must follow spiritual rules. And the commandments of God are the basic rules for that end.
Now of course, we all fail to keep these commandments for a variety of reasons. And the Christian recognizes the necessity of repentance, of confessing the serious violations of our covenant relationship with God. We admit to God even our smaller, venial sins, as well as we can, so that they do not pave the way for graver violations.
The young man in the Gospel, seems like he was doing pretty well. "Teacher,” he says “all of these commandments I have observed from my youth." Okay, good. Jesus recognizes that in this young man, the fundamental are in place, the aspirations are right, but the Lord sensed a restlessness in the young man. “You are lacking in one thing”, the Lord said. What was he lacking?Despite his fidelity to the law, the young man was unwilling to detach himself from his possessions and follow the Lord radically.
“Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." The Lord knew that the man’s possessions had become a stumbling block to his salvation, so he illuminated this fact, and showed him what he had to do. This does not mean every single one of us has to get rid of all of our earthly possessions to follow Christ, but it certainly means that we must be spiritually detatched from them and dedicate them to God's purpose rather than our own selfish ends.
At that statement we then hear one of the saddest lines in all of the Gospels. “his face fell, and he went away sad.” The encounter with the Lord is meant to bring us conversion, joy, and life, but the young man walked away from that which would have brought him joy and that is always a sad story.
Last week in our parish youth group, we talked about joy, how following the commands of God leads to joy, how prayer and service bring us a joy that nothing else in the world can possibly give. Joy, is very different from happiness. Happiness is satisfaction with temporary things. I’m happy when the browns win, I’m happy when my chicken wings are at the perfect level of crispiness, I’m happy when the traffic light turns green at just the right time.
Joy, however, comes from our relationship with the eternal things of God: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Our hearts are filled not just with happiness, but joy, when we learn the Truth that comes from God, when we engage in truly good acts, caring for the poor, caring for a sick family member, feeding the hungry, forgiving those who hurt us. And we are filled with joy at the sight of beauty, true beauty, beautiful and timeless Christian art and architecture, the beauty of God’s creation.
The young man turns his heart away from joy because he chooses to value passing, temporary, earthly things, his possessions, over the truth, and goodness, and beauty of Jesus Christ.
I guarantee, that each of the saints being canonized this weekend, knew this secret to joy. Now, that doesn’t mean their lives were easy. Each faced tremendous suffering, but that did not diminish their joy. Because authentic joy does not diminish in the face of suffering, but can intensify it, when that suffering is embraced for the good of the Church and the spread of the Gospel.
As we celebrate the Eucharist today, may the Holy Spirit help us identify those attitudes or habits that we need to turn away from in order to experience the joy and eternal life God wants for us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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