Note: in today’s reflection I used the readings from the Memorial of St. Anthony the Abbot rather than the Daily Readings. The Gospel for the Memorial is taken from Matthew’s account of the rich young man asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. 27 years ago I was a missionary in Kenya, on retreat, and wrote a reflection on Mark’s version of the same story. Enjoy.

No one ever really wants to be poor
I’ve never heard of a waiting line to join the poor
People queuing, arriving early to get a good spot and all that
If you’d ask even the most devout of parishes or congregations or assemblies
You wouldn’t get volunteers
Maybe a lot don’t want to be rich and have to worry about squeezing through the eye of a needle along with some dromedary
But they don’t want to be poor either and worry about their next meal or that of their family

I bet that young man with the many possessions wishes he never asked
It was a witless question
I think he could have taken a look at Jesus and known that this inquiry would come out all wrong
The man had been walking all over Israel and Judah and probably looked it too
All of his friends were Galileans, and we all know what good things come out Galilee
What was he thinking?
I guess it was the enthusiasm of faith

I am sure many of us wish he’d never asked that question
Put us in a bit of a tough spot it did

The quite-literal Christians don’t seem to take Jesus’ answer too literally on this one
He was only making a point…, He knew the heart of the man…, It was a simile — or is that an analogy or some such thing?
Someone once told me that “needle” was a word of first century slang indicating the passages in the walls of Jerusalem where the everyday traffic passed.
A camel could get through all right, a bit of a squeeze as long as it wasn’t loaded with too much
So you see, the problem with the rich is not that they have things, but that they have too much
Of course, the rich are always someone else
My ancient Aramaic slang expert friend no doubt needed a few things more

Jesus himself even clouded the issue for us when he told us that we would get a hundred fold reward in this lifetime if we’d give up everything and follow him
Seems to me to overloading the camel a touch
But then the scholars and theologians in these things weigh in again and tells us what Jesus really meant
So we’re allowed to keep a few things and maybe even add a few things more

A friend of mine was always able to fit everything she owned into her car
Kept her mobile and flexible
Mind you, I think her car would carry more than a camel could
But the invention of electricity is probably to blame and so we can make some allowances for these modern times
She bought a house now and somehow things keep filling up the space inside

I’m not being judgmental as I find that I am in the same predicament
As a Franciscan missionary I came to this place with two bags and a dreamy glaze over my eyes
I moved recently and found the two bags full, the glaze gone and a whole lot left over laying on the floor asking to be taken along
I thought maybe I could transform one of the bags into a Black Hole
Then I would just push all the things near the event horizon and my packing problems would be solved as they were sucked into the void

They say you come into this world naked and you go out naked
That certainly solves the problem
But in the meantime I think I’ll leave a few things behind in the here and there of mission
Maybe check the closets when I get home
Work a little harder on the following-Jesus-part of the question
And maybe the rest will just take care of itself

Image credit: “Shifting Coronas Around Black Holes” by aeroman3 from Open Verse | PD-US