Today's Gospel

How to Enter the Eye of a Needle

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we're exploring the genius of Jesus, the genius of the gospels, the genius of Catholicism, and learning how to apply the gospel of the day to our lives in real and practical ways. Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Matthew 19: 23 - 30. And Jesus said to His disciples, "Truly I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished saying, "Who then can be saved?" But Jesus looked at them and said, "With men, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible." And then Peter said in reply, "Lo, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?" And Jesus said to them, "Truly I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man shall sit on His glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel and everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life. But many that are first will be last and the last first."

What jumps out at you today? Two things jump out at me. The first thing is like the hundredfold return. Jesus promises this hundredfold return. And that's a beautiful thing. That's a bold promise. That's not something to be looked at in a way that is trite. But what jumped out at me today, and I've never thought about this before, read this reading hundreds of times, that Jesus says, "I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." And then he doubles down on that. He says, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Now, I've heard some scholars talk about the eye of a needle as one of the gates into Jerusalem. And in order to enter this gate, the camels, they had to take the camels down onto their knees to get through this gate. And sometimes to take some of the things off the back of the camel that the camel was carrying. And of course, for us to enter the kingdom of heaven, yes, we have to go down on our knees before God. We have to worship. We have to pray and to do that humbly and in deep ways. But we also have to take some of the baggage off, right?

Many of the things of this world can stop us from entering the eye of the needle or stop us from entering the kingdom of God. But what struck me today, and it really struck me very powerfully, Jesus says this, and then the disciples are astonished, and they say, "Well, then who can be saved?" And what strikes me here is that in that, the disciples are essentially saying, "Everybody is rich." I think when we hear this, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, we immediately narrow down all of humanity to just these rich people, right? But then the disciples, they expand that out again. Well, they say, "Well, if that's the case, is there anybody who can be saved?" And of course, that's the reality, right? Because our blessings, our riches are great. And we, of course, when Jesus says the rich man, we think about worldly riches, right? We think about money, we think about things, we think about the riches of this world. But the disciples obviously are thinking about it differently because they say, "Well, who can be saved?" Which means everybody must be rich in some way, or at least in the way that they are understanding something about what Jesus is saying. What is it that jumped out at you today? And how are you going to live that wisdom from this gospel in your everyday life? Have an amazing day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.