Detachment from the world
Friends in Christ, today in the gospel, Our Lord first warns against seeking after riches; ‘Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Then Peter says, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” Jesus tells him that for those who give up all to follow him, they will receive many times more, back, and eternal life.
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In Christ’s many teachings, it is not the fact of having nice things or wealth that is the problem, but really, our attachment to things of this world, making them into gods, as the first reading says today. To set our heart on created things, whether it be material goods, or clothes, or cars, or shoes; or whether it be experiences – travel, adventure, sports – or even persons on whom we set our heart, instead of God – we will not find peace, or joy, and we won’t find God.
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Father Faber has some great insights to the problem of seeking happiness in created things. He says, it leads to an endless, hopeless seeking of consolations and recreations. To seek in creatures what we feel we can’t find in God is truly a state of misery, he says, and is an endless and hopeless business. There is no end to it.
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Like bees among distasteful flowers, we fly from one to another, hardly stopping, but the honey which we taste is drugged. Strange to say, seeking joy in things, outside of God, becomes more of a necessity to us, the less that we are satisfied by it.
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This search for creature-consolation, like all failures, makes us irritable witih others. We pour our disappointment on them because money or experiences or some person could not fulfill us. And when all of this fails, as we are close to a frustrating despair, we turn to the lowest of all: bodily comforts: food, or drink, or drugs – to numb the empty feeling.
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How much better for us to detach our heart from all created things, and live for Jesus Christ alone. Then we will have all that our heart desires, and eternal life.
