What Do You Desire?

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Christmas is slightly more than 10 weeks away.  As a priest, that makes me say: oh my!  Now, when I was a kid, that meant it was time to start picking through the toy catalogues from different stores to see what I wanted for Christmas presents.  I have no idea why, but there were years where I wanted a Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll (I was a weird child, I guess).  But I focused my attention pretty quickly on what I wanted.

What do you want?  What do you desire?  We’re really good at asking God for things that we want.  Some are as frivolous as a Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll; others are more enduring like love, health, and good friends.  King Solomon, the traditional author of the Book of Wisdom whence our first reading came today, asked for prudence and wisdom.  As we hear in the Second Book of Samuel, he didn’t pray for gold, for a long reign, or for the death of his enemies, but for the gifts that were truly necessary to be a good king.  Prudence is that virtue that tells us when, to whom, and how to do the right thing.  Wisdom is that virtue that tells us what to do, what that right thing is. 

In the Gospel we heard today, a man goes to Jesus desiring to go to heaven.  He, like King Solomon, didn’t want passing things.  He wanted eternal life.  Jesus tells him to obey the commandments.  “Yep.  Got it,” he says.  And then Jesus “loved him and said to him, ‘You are lacking in one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”  Jesus presses to the place where his desire for heaven stops, and in this case, it was his money.

I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we all have parts of our life that we are not quite comfortable giving to Jesus.  Those parts probably change during our lives, but they’re there, nonetheless.  We all can say (I hope) at a surface level, “I want to go to heaven.”  But then that desire bumps into another desire, and we find out what we value more: heaven or the other thing.  Today’s Gospel is not so much about having money (though it can easily be an obstacle to our relationship with God).  It’s about whatever it is that we value more than our relationship with God and our goal of going to heaven.

If you wonder if you have anything that you value more than heaven, then think about how you would feel if it God asked you to give it up in order to go to heaven.  Maybe it’s control (or what we consider control) of our life.  Some people, like me, like to have things planned out and have a particular direction.  If God asked me to give that up, that would be difficult for me.  God may not ask me to give control up, but if I’m not willing to give it up, then I’m not ready for heaven.  What if God asked you to give up your family?  It should make you sad (if losing your family makes you happy, we need to talk!).  But could you do that for God?  People do.  People who convert to Catholicism, especially in the Middle East, are sometimes disowned by family members.  What if God asked you to give up all your money?  Could you do that for God?  Could you do that to gain eternal life if Jesus asked you to, like he asked the man in today’s Gospel?  How about your political affiliation?  If God asked you to stop being a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or whatever so that you could go to heaven, could you do that?  Sadly, too often I know people who are more committed to a political platform than to their faith.  Whatever it is, if we desire it more than we desire God, than we desire eternal union with Him in heaven, Jesus invites us to give it up to find true and eternal happiness.

Sometimes God doesn’t ask us to give something up, but He asks us if we’re willing to give it up.  But sometimes He does ask us to leave less important things behind, sometimes even to leave people behind because they’re not helpful to our eternal salvation.  How do you know?  Pray.  Pray and ask God what you need to leave behind to focus on your relationship with God.  It may take time, and even if we walk away from Jesus, He never walks away from us.  But I encourage you to pray to God to see what He is inviting you to leave behind.  To help you, I invite you to look up Bl. Charles de Foucauld, who wrote a beautiful prayer on abandoning ourselves to God.

Father,

I abandon myself into your hands;

do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you:

I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,

and in all your creatures - 

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:

I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,

for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,

to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,

and with boundless confidence,

for you are my Father.

Amen.