Introduction: One day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
Prayer: fill our hearts with your love that loving you in all things and above all things we may attain your promises.
1 Reading Ezekiel: 24: 15-24
Resp Psalm. You forget the God who fathered you
God will hide his face,
God is jealous because the people worship idols
Gospel Acclamation: Train me, Lord to observe you law, keep it with my heart
Gospel: Mathew 19; 16-22
If you wish to be perfect, go and sell what you own.
The prayer we said at the start of the Mass was “Fill our hearts with your love that loving you in all things and above all things we may attain your promises.
This is what God wanted from the people of Israel. To love him with all their heart, all their soul, and all their mind, that they would get one day the promises he had made to them. But Israel was a fickle nation that never fulfilled this desire of God. After worshiping God for some time, they would go after the false Gods and do what was most displeasing to God, idol worship. They boasted about their Temple where the presence of God was visible. That is why they said, “One day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. “Yet they went after the pagan Gods.
And God sent them prophets to call them back to the love of the true and only God, and not contaminate themselves with idol worship. Ezekiel in today’s first reading, ordered by God, acts out a parable, to tell the people how angry God is with their sinful ways. Ezekiel loved his wife dearly, she was the joy of his life, but God tells him that He is going to take her away and tells him not to be sad at this deprivation. It was a sign to the people that God was going to allow the temple, in which the people of Israel delighted, to be destroyed. And they would be subjected to great sorrow for their children and for the loss of their nation. And all this because they did not listen to the call of God to give up their idolatry and come back to the true God.
Love for God has to be total. There is no half measure with God. God created us to know him to love him and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in heaven. To know him we have to search for him. And Jeremiah tells us that to find God we must search for him with all our heart.
“If you search for me you will find me, if you search for with all your heart, you will find me (Jer29:13)
And if we want to love Go, we must love him with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind (Mt. 22:37).
And Jesus tells us that if we want to serve God, then serve him alone. “You cannot serve two masters” (Mt.6:24).
And Jesus praises the widow for putting in all she had to live on, (Lk. 21:2) while others put in their abundance.
Ananias and Sapphira were punished by God not because they did not give, but they did not give all (Acts.5).
And in the Gospel passage today Jesus tells the young man “If you want to be perfect, Go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor”). Lk. 18:22 clearly says everything. “Sell everything you own and distribute the money to the poor”.
But the young man was not ready to sell all what he owned. So, he goes away sad, failing to become a follower of Jesus.
Accepting to follow Jesus, have we given ALL, have we sold everything? Perhaps, we have given money and material things. But there are many things still we hold on to and refuse to sell. Our pride, our selfishness, our greed and many things that we are afraid to sell, like the young man in the Gospel. Without selling all, we cannot be true followers of Jesus. And if we try to follow him without selling all, we might even get the punishment Ananias and Sapphira got. May God save us from that. (By Fr. Tom Karthik SDB)