Our Many Possessions

Gospel: Matthew 19: 16-26

How often are we like the rich man before the Lord, justifying our life with appeals to the better half of our ledger: we have kept the commandments since our youth.  But like a good social media profile, we don't reveal everything.  We hide the fact that we are attached to so many things, that we prefer so many other things to the Lord, and we do not want to give them up.  They prevent us from following the Lord and from the kingdom of God.

Our possessions may indeed be like those of the rich man: material possessions like our fine house or car, clothes, and the like.  It may be the status of the world, political and economic power, the preference for our political ideologies over the Gospel, or our preference to please the rich and powerful rather than the poor and outcast.  So many things hold us back from following the Lord fully, and the Lord watches in sadness...

Anthony and the early desert fathers and mothers fled into the desert at the precise time the Church became the preferred religion of the Empire.  The priests and bishops left the humble caves of persecution for the palaces of the powerful and have remained there ever since, justifying the violence of empire they once condemned and that we once faced as our lot before the world.  Anthony and the desert fathers and mothers remind us of what the Lord calls us to do in order to follow the Lord unreservedly.