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Who Can Be Saved?
6 min
Gospel
Mt 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 God.” When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Then Peter said in reply, “Lo, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” 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 twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one 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.
Readings are taken from Dynamic Catholic’s Bible: RSV Catholic Edition.
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Transcript
Who Can Be Saved?
Is there a word or a phrase or an idea that jumps out at you today? For me, it's this concept of order from chaos. Our lives are chaotic. The world is chaotic. Our hearts are chaotic. Our minds are chaotic. And God wants to bring order where there is chaos.
God wants to bring order to our hearts, order to our minds, order to our lives, order to our communities, to our countries, to our world. God wants to bring order. And so what happens every time we read the Gospels, Jesus is readjusting, realigning our values. He's demonstrating that what we think is important isn't as important as we think it is, or isn't important at all.
And he's trying to get us to focus in on the things that really matter. And of course, today he talks about the rich man trying to go through the eye of a needle and what the disciples say is interesting. They say to Jesus, "Who then can be saved?" Why is it interesting?
It's interesting because they say, they don't say, "Well, how is Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk going to get saved?" They don't name the richest people of their times and say, "We're worried about these richest people that they're not going to be able to get saved." Their question is, who then will be able to be saved?
And the assumption in the question is that we're all rich. The assumption in the question is that we are all rich, that it is incredibly difficult to get through the eye of the needle, that the path to eternity with God is narrow. The world's constantly trying to carve out these broad highways for us to travel on. But the path, the road to God, is narrow.
It requires taking responsibility for our actions. It requires discipline on a daily basis. It requires laying down our lives in the service of others. It is difficult. It is narrow. And that's why the disciples are astonished because we are all rich. We are all rich in different ways. We are all rich.
And whatever our riches are, we struggle to surrender them to God. Have a great day, and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.
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