Today’s readings: Wisdom 7, 7-11; Hebrews 4, 12-13; Mark 10, 17-30.

Eternal life, for what that can mean to the modern mind, is the key to today’s readings, particularly to the gospel story of a man who, however pious he may have been, lacked the right perspective that makes life really worth living. Today’s gospel story is a face-to-face drama where Mark brings together someone’s enthusiasm and the challenge of the kingdom.

The story forms part of the discipleship discourse in Mark. But here the meaning of self-denial is further concretised by Jesus to include possessions. Jesus speaks of the need for all of us to be healed of the sickness of accumulation, which makes of us all avid consumers. I consume, therefore I am, goes the modern-day axiom.

Jesus’s pattern in his interaction with people was to call people from the security of their daily living onto the way. Mark’s description of how Jesus “looked steadily at this man and loved him”, as well as of how the man “went away sad”, hints at how heavily burdened we may become to the extent of being beyond reach.

It is literally the case of being possessed by possessions.

Even what we read from the letter to Hebrews in the second reading is significantly relevant to this man’s drama: “The word of God can judge the secret emotions and thoughts. No created thing can hide from him.”

Jesus invites us perennially to be true to ourselves in order to enjoy inner freedom as the key to our happiness. To acquire that inner freedom, we have to be capable of looking critically at ourselves. That is what God’s word does when we allow it to speak the truth to us.

The story of this rich man with a good education and upbringing yet reluctant to look at himself critically is very telling of how easy it is for us all to simply live disconnected with our own self.

The recipe is in the reading from Wisdom, because it is the spirit of wisdom that keeps us in touch with our inner reality, feelings and emotions.

This spirit of wisdom though is always likened in the gospel to new wine that cannot be contained in our old frameworks. Jesus, as a first reaction to this man’s interrogation about inheriting eternal life, gives the standard rabbinical answer – keep the Commandments.

But the rich young man, apparently dissatisfied with his good education, was in search of more to life.

The heart cries for wisdom, and religion by itself can end up being only a facade that can never quench the real thirst.

Besides the implications of disconnectedness in our style of living, in this story Mark is also hinting at the suspicious source of the man’s wealth.

Mark, in fact, in his reference to the Decalogue, includes “You must not defraud”, which strictly speaking we do not find in the Decalogue and which here clearly refers to economic exploitation.

For Mark, the law is kept only through concrete acts of justice, not through a facade of piety.

Ched Myers, in his commentary on Mark’s gospel, may be right in claiming that “the famous medieval assertion that the ‘eye of the needle’ referred to a certain small gate in ancient Jerusalem through which camels could enter only on their knees is only one of the more obvious ways devised to rob this metaphor of its class-critical power”.

Mark is suggesting that the eschatological harvest occurs at this time, emphasising the kingdom on earth.

It is only towards the end of the text when the rich man had already left that Jesus answers his original question.

At times we put ourselves in a position of distance from the truth and in a condition of not being able to grasp it.