Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 32 of Season 7 for the Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time  - October 13, 2024. Our Gospel reading is from Mark Chapter 10, verses 17-27. 

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  Jesus answered him, "Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.” 

He replied and said to him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, 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.” At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"

 The disciples were amazed at his words.  So Jesus again said to them in reply, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!  It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."  They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, "Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, "For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God."

The Gospel of the Lord 

“Measuring Your True Investment in God,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

We all have investments. We save to buy a new home. We save for our retirement. We save for many different reasons, and we take those investments and if we don't do it ourselves, we give it to somebody who has the ability and the knowledge to do so, and we invest them. And the hope of that activity is that what we invest those monies in will cause the baseline to grow. Who would, in their right mind, give somebody their $10,000, and every month it's going in the red? Something is wrong with the investment strategy.  

And so we are very savvy with our financial affairs, or at least our secular wisdom would direct us to be so. But what is our investment in God? How do we monitor that investment and how do we judge whether it's growing? 

Well, I think for many of us, it goes back to the idea that even though we grow older and we leave school, we're always still very much with a student mentality. And I think we measure ourselves up to a great extent on how we're performing with the Ten Commandments and then the commandments that Jesus gives us. And so it goes something like this: we take a commandment, let's take keep holding the Sabbath day. Let's start with that one. And we look at the commandment, keep holy the Sabbath day, and then, we look at our lives. And we wanna be honest with God, and so we say, well, I don't always reserve the Sabbath for God. Maybe I do so 70% of the time. So we give ourselves a 70. After all, any good student knows 70 is a C minus. I pass. Check. So what 30% of the time I'm off? I'm still in the good. Still in the good. 

Do we swear? Do not take the Lord's name in vain. It's a tough world out there. You're driving in your car. Do not take the Lord's name in vain. Well,  maybe 60%, but I still pass. It's a D minus. So, so far I’ve got a C minus and a D minus, but two checks I passed, I can get promoted to the next grade. It's not good. When I came home with my report card, and I had a C minus and a D minus, I may have been going on to the next grade, but I wasn't gonna go too far in the house when my parents found out that I got those grades.  

The rich young man in today's gospel was kind of measuring himself in that same way. He said, well, for the basics, I kept all of those commandments. I know what the law says. I know what I'm supposed to be doing. But Jesus said, yes, all those commandments and the ones I added to love your neighbor and all of those things, it's all very important. How do we score on love our neighbor? You got that difficult guy that lives next door. Maybe 75%, but I still pass. And Jesus says, well, that's all good. That's great, but you gotta do one more thing. You know those investment accounts you've been so worried about in all those possessions you've been accumulating? Get rid of 'em and come and follow me. And that'll be the measure of your true investment. That's going to tell me whether you truly do buy into this deal and love me. 

So what did he do? He turned away very sad 'cause he had a lot of that stuff, which was very important to him. He wasn't ready to part with it. Looking more realistically at this, what he really wasn't willing to do was turn his glance away from it. And see, this is where we fall into trouble.  

Yes, we need to secure ourselves to some extent in this world, but it cannot become our obsession. It cannot become our sole aim and purpose. We cannot be more invested in what's happening in the stock market than what's happening in our souls. Because Jesus, when he says, follow me, he's not imposing a penalty. He's not telling us that it's gonna be something that is going to be hurtful. He's doing this because he knows one thing and one thing only: that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. 

And you can have an investment account that's matched by none other and accumulate billions of dollars but still be extremely miserable inside, very lonely, very isolated, very superficial, and very lost. That’s why those folks that don't have the privilege of earthly investment accounts often find themselves with a wealth of wisdom and love that's envious to us all. 

So what is it that God really wants? Well, think of God as the best friend of your life, the most important person being in your life. That’s what God wants of us: to turn our glance and to see him as the source, not only of our life but of our love. And he's asking us to invest in that love and to rest in that love. 

Think of your best earthly friend. It could be your spouse. It could be another love. And how often you're going through a struggle. You’re going through a crisis, you're going through a rough patch, and you know that that person cannot solve your problem for you. You know that it's impossible to expect them to do so. But because there's a bond of love to be shared, is it not simply enough to be held and embraced and welcomed in the arms of that love? To be assured and reassured that you're not alone, that there's someone with you, and that it's going to be okay.  

Well, that's what God wants to give us, is that eternal place to go to his own heart, to his own essence, so that he can hold us, embrace us, and remind us that we are loved beyond all things. That before we were even born or conceived and well on after we leave this life throughout eternity, we are always held in love. He wants to embrace us and remind us that this is our essence and what it's all about.  

And what happens in that embrace? Something very surprising occurs, even though the burdens we carry can be very heavy at times, indeed, and even though the pain and the cross we find ourselves carrying can be very heavy as well, we are going to find ourselves experiencing something we never knew we could experience, and it's called joy because that's the gift that God can give us. No earthly investment account can provide us with joy, only a heart that's turned from the cares and the concerns of the world to the cares and the concerns in the heart of God. That's the only place we can find joy, and in the end, joy is our essence and our salvation. 

Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.