Last week, Hurricane Michael caused minimal damage in the Tampa Bay area; far less fortunate were our neighbors up in the panhandle. As many of them begin to rebuild their lives, let’s keep them in our thoughts and prayers and help them with whatever resources we can.
Did you ever look at people your own age and think, surely I can't look that old. I read about a woman who was waiting for her first appointment with a new dentist. When she saw the dentist's name on the diploma on the wall, she remembered a tall, handsome teenager with the same name in her class 40 years ago. She had a crush on him!And then the dentist appeared: bald, pot-bellied, wrinkle-faced and sagging jowls. She thought, he's too old to be my classmate. Afterwards she asked the dentist, did you graduate from such and such a school? Yes. And when? In 1970, he answered. She shrieked, why we were in the same class! And then the dentist deadpanned, what did you teach me? I wonder how old he thought she was!
Here’s a true story about three high school students who grew up in poor, broken homes in a Newark, New Jersey neighborhood riddled with crime, drugs and violence.
One day, these three heard about a program in medicine for minority students, and they made what they called “the pact.” They agreed that together they would apply for this program, and together they would finish medical school and come back to serve as doctors in Newark.
The three were accepted. In college, they stuck together. They prodded, pushed and supported each other. They studied together, worked summer jobs together, and learned how to solve problems together. They even partied together.
Two entered medical school, and the third, dental school. Despite their different schedules, they continued to stick together.
There were times when they wanted to give up on their dreams, and times when they made bad decisions. But with the power of their friendship, they endured and their dreams came true. The three doctors wrote a best-selling book titled “The Pact.”
Now their incredible journey began when they had the intuition to see the possibilities within one another.
Jesus in today’s Gospel recognized the potential for spiritual greatness in the wealthy, young man.
And I hope that each of us recognizes the potential for greatness within one another; and compels us to help one another, as best we can, to realize the incredible potential for good that we all have.
The word of God takes us back to the wisdom literature of ancient Israel. The author pleads, not for wealth or power or fame or health or beauty, but for true wisdom.
It enables us to distinguish what’s important in life, to answer those fundamental questions: What am I living for? What is my purpose? Today we might ask God to grace us anew with true wisdom.
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews speaks about the word of God which, like a surgical knife, can open us up and reveal our true purpose: living an other-centered, God-centered life.
The author may be asking you and me: what drives us? God and our fellow human beings? Or our own self-seeking?
In the Gospel according to Mark, we have the story of the well-to-do young man who is not content with his life. He’s looking for something more. He wants eternal life. Oh, yes, he has observed all the commandments.
But he wants to know: what else should he do? And Jesus recognizes the potential for spiritual greatness within him and says: Go, sell what you have and follow me.
Sadly, this person couldn’t give up what he had. He couldn’t see the potential for spiritual greatness within himself by following Jesus.
Yes, the young man was searching for fuller and deeper meaning. The so-called “good life” didn’t seem to satisfy him. He wanted to live for something more, for someone greater than himself. That is what motivates many people.
A well-known twentieth century author, Viktor Frankl, was an inmate of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, just outside of Munich, Germany. Among the books he authored is the classic “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
In prewar Vienna, Frankl had a wife, two children, a good psychiatric profession and a comfortable home. But he lost all of these. In the concentration camp, he lost every earthly thing he treasured – wife, children, profession, home. And these losses brought him face-to-face with the fundamental questions of life: What should I be living for? What is my purpose?
Frankl discovered that people could put up with incredible hardships, cruelties and sufferings, without losing their serenity and respect for others, provided they saw that these hardships had some ultimate meaning.
In their hearts, people yearn for something or someone beyond themselves that can give greater meaning and greater value to their lives.
This something else or someone else can take different forms: such as family, a profession, a passion for human rights, the greater common good, and so forth. When a person finds something that gives transcendent meaning to his or her life, that meaning awakens new energies within. They see more, perform better and, in short, they become men and women of faith.
Every man, every woman of faith, has someone or something to whom he or she gives their ultimate allegiance. That object may be something quite finite -- wealth or power as in today’s Gospel -- or it may be God himself, the absolute good.
The 19th century Russian novelist Fydor Dostoevsky in his classic “Brothers Karamozov” wrote: “Every man, every woman, must bend his or her knee before some god.”
You and I profess to find the ultimate purpose of life in a relationship with God:
a God who:
--by the power of the Spirit became one of us in Jesus;
--transformed the crucified Jesus into a new heavenly reality; and is alive among us today especially in the sacramental life of our global faith community;
--challenges us to reach out compassionately to his image in our fellow human beings; and eventually to let go of our earthly life in the mystery of death so that we can be transformed into a new kind of spiritual embodiment, like the Risen Christ.
Jesus in the Gospel recognized the potential for spiritual greatness in the young man, and when asked, gave him a pathway. But the man walked away.
Consider again the incredible journey of those three New Jersey high schoolers who had the intuition to see the possibilities within each other, and who joined together in a pact, supporting each other in the pursuit of their dream.
I hope that each one of us recognizes the potential for greatness within one another. And I hope that recognition will compel us to help one another, as best we can, realize the incredible potential for good that we all have.
