“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
It seems to be a constant thing that we believe
we can merit our salvation.
Time and time again throughout all the Old Testament scriptures
and indeed when Jesus comes even more so
that we do not merit God’s love.
We do not merit our salvation.
It is a free gift from God.
His love is unconditional.
Here is the really hard part;
there is nothing that we can do that will make God love us any more
and there is nothing we can do to make God love us any less!
God loves us completely and unconditionally already.
I do not know why this is so hard for us to understand.
We want to be able to pay our dues so that we can get God’s love.
We want to feel like we earned it.
We want to feel we deserve it.
If we do this then God loves us more;
we believe in completely human terms.
Jesus tells us that it is just not the way God works.
If the glass is already full,
it’s full no matter how much more you put into the glass,
it is still completely full.
When we have God’s full love,
there is nothing more we can do to make the glass fuller.
It is already full.
And we find it so hard, so very hard.
This is what this man we meet today in the gospel
believes that he is going to earn eternal life.
What must he do?
He is going to earn it.
Our prayers are like coins into a vending machine.
We put in our prayers.
We put in our good acts, and we get salvation,
which comes out in the slot.
But this is just not the way it works, according to Jesus.
The great Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhart says it well,
“The spiritual life is more about subtraction than it is addition.”
It is more about letting go of things
than it is to accumulate and gathering things,
even good things of the spiritual things of our life;
it is about letting go of everything
to follow and to accept God’s love.
The hard part for us is that swe live in a culture that does not support us.
The dominant culture we live in is more about
consumption and accumulation.
We are valued more for how much and what we consume
and what we have or hold onto.
The more we consume and the more we have
then somehow the better we are;
whether that be a new iPhone;
or a new computer;
or a new pair of shoes;
or a new watch;
or new hairdo
or whatever it is that gives us our sense of value.
The counterpoint to this dominant culture is Christianity.
Christianity lived well, Catholicism lived well, is about letting go.
It is about emptying ourselves of all the stuff;
letting go of all the possessions that hold us back;
whatever is between us and our God.
Is it about a certain amount of wealth? Yes.
But it is way more than possessions.
Possessions are more than about money.
There is so much that possesses us today.
It could be even just as simple as now we are online,
all the likes we get online,
whether it be Instagram or Facebook or Twitter
or all those multitudes of social media.
We already know how addictive Instagram is;
it is about accumulating stuff, right?
And how disastrous that can be to our human spirit.
We go into the scripture today and this man says he wants the right thing;
he wants eternal life,
he wants what is good but he thinks he is going to earn it!
Jesus gives us this counterpoint.
He says “Surrender, let it go, the spirituality of letting go.”
Or as Eckhart would say the spirituality of subtraction;
we give stuff away;
we give away what matters to us
and we accept what matters to God.
This process of surrender or subtraction
is something we do at every single Mass.
We begin the Mass with a very short penitential rite.
We say, “Lord, we come here with all this baggage, all these wounds,
and we say Lord have mercy.
Here are all the things that I have not done so well.
Christ have mercy.
Here are all the things I would have done or could have done.
Lord have mercy.”
And the Lord then fills us with his love and forgiveness
and assures us that his love is always there.
What is it that we must let go of?
Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk, said it best:
“The biggest struggle we have in modern America
is we have to let go of the false ego.”
What he calls the false ego is that need to be in control.
When we talk about being in control,
we want the latest toys whether that be you know for the kids;
or whether it is for us adults: computers, laptops, cars or houses;
whatever it is.
We want to be in control.
We think we can even control God.
We tell God what to do and
some even tell him who should come to Mass
and who shouldn’t come to Mass;
who should receive and who should not receive.
We think we can control everything.
And that is all of ushaving to fill the need of our ego
that we are in control.
The true ego, Merton will say is accepting
that we are all children of God.
And that every one of us is equal.
It doesn’t make any difference
what creed or race or place we come from.
We are all equal in God’s eyes.
And God loves us completely and unconditionally.
Out of receiving that love, we become generous.
Out of receiving that love, we find ourselves giving away what we have.
We find ourselves just giving away our very selves
because we realize that everything is gift.
As we come to this Eucharist,
we ask the Lord to help us enter this spirituality of subtraction
or spirituality of surrender, we surrender our will to God’s Will;
we surrender our need for control;
our need to make things work according to our will,
we give that over to God’s Will
and let his Will be done.
Then we say ever so humbly,
Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy.
And then we receive not only God’s love,
God’s mercy but God’s abundant love.
God’s ever complete and unconditional love
that will completely fill us up.
We surrender to God’s love by letting go and not earning his love.
And that makes all the difference in the world.
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
