Word of the Week
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Good: Agathos (Gk.): meaning “of good constitution or nature”. It can also mean “useful, salutary pleasant, agreeable, joyful, happy, excellent, distinguished, upright, and honorable.”
The CCC makes clear that abiding in the goodness of God is to live with a poor man’s heart that is humble and pure. Christ’s response to the Rich Young Man demonstrates that “…following Jesus Christ involves keeping the Commandments. The Law has not been abolished, but rather man is invited to rediscover it in the person of his Master who is its perfect fulfillment. In the three synoptic Gospels, Jesus' call to the rich young man to follow him, in the obedience of a disciple and in the observance of the Commandments, is joined to the call to poverty and chastity. The evangelical counsels are inseparable from the Commandments” (CCC, 2053). Hence, poverty and chastity leads to every other key word that is tied to sharing in the goodness that belongs to God alone. Such words include ‘joyful, happy, excellent, upright, and honorable.’
The Greek agathos can be found over 100 times in the New Testament, but only twice in the gospel of Mark. Both cases are found in the Rich Young Man’s inquiry to Christ in how to inherit eternal life: “good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mk.10: 17-18). The Rich Young Man asks the question that we all ought to be asking, what must I do to inherit eternal life? His question about attaining joy in the temporal realm is fixed upon the eternal realm. His inquiry appears to be genuine, as does the response of Christ. Strategically, Christ directs him to the wisdom of the Decalogue and the call to live upright to the moral law (cf. Mk.10:19). Strikingly, the precepts to the 10 Commandments DOES NOT explicitly include within it the call to sell all that you have. Christ was giving the letter of the law a new spiritual element, that of sacrifice, and simultaneously challenging the Rich Young Man, and every reader of Scripture, to look within himself, to discover what we have attached ourselves too and how we are called to give ourselves as a gift to God. In addition, The Rich Young Man’s response was one of grief, because of his inability to sell his inheritance to gain inheritance. We need to learn from the Rich Young Man that the manner in which we are pre-disposed to receive God’s challenge rests at the heart of a more radical relationship with Christ.
This 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time comes on the heels of recent weeks where the Church has been reflecting upon the need to see our attachment to God as more worthy than our attachments to material possessions. Christ’s directive to the Rich Young Man to sell everything and give to the poor was to draw him into an exclusive relationship with God, and at the same time increase in wisdom. Wisdom is at the heart of this week’s readings because by gaining wisdom we become a people of discernment and are better able to distinguish between good and evil. The Rich Young Man has two lessons for us: one good and one bad. The good: he is after God’s point of view; the bad: he does not adhere to God’s point of view. Let us pray for the gift of wisdom and espouse towards God’s point of view and do one better then the Rich Young Man, adhere to God’s point of view.
“The question which the rich young man puts to Jesus of Nazareth is one which rises from the depths of his heart. It is an essential and unavoidable question for the life of every man, for it is about the moral good which must be done, and about eternal life.”
--Pope John Paul II
Primary Texts Consulted
