Before a quick reflection on scripture, I just want to wish blessing on all those runners who are running today’s Chicago marathon. I’ve never run a marathon. I don’t ever intend to run a marathon but I admire and will bless those who are running the marathon today. Kudos and congratulations. And personally, I’d like to give a shout out to my mother who this very day, October 13th, celebrates 77 years. Happy birthday, mom. 

You know, as we come together today, we hear this gospel story that’s called the rich young man. It’s a young man we know, and we find out he has many possessions so we’re able to call him rich, the rich young man. And the rich young man deeply wants to know what it’s going to take for him to gain, to have eternal life that Jesus has been preaching about. What do I need to do to gain eternal or everlasting life? 

And Jesus’ response was very disappointing for the rich young man. Jesus’ response was, “go sell everything you have.” 

[Priest gasps] 

I’m sure it was kind of a body blow for this rich young man to go sell everything, All of his possessions. Who knows what the rich young man did, but we do have Jesus’ answer. Go sell everything. Go sell everything and come and follow me. 

Recently, somebody who I’ve known for many years came and told me my response or what I preached about on this gospel dozens of years ago. I said that the guy didn’t have to go and sell his BMW, And he was very happy to hear that. He didn’t have to go and sell his BMW. But he didn’t recount to me what I did say. It was probably something like this, I think. It was probably something like this: 

Let’s keep our eyes on the other readings for today, on all the readings for today, as we hear what we’re called to do. 

Go and follow Jesus. But before we heard that gospel, we heard in the first reading, we heard about prudence and wisdom personified. Did you hear that? Wisdom and prudence were personified. They were held up as a high virtue. 

I think as we have lots of material gifts and blessings, we’re called to be prudent and wise about how we use those. How do we use the gifts that God has given us so generously and give back to God for what we’ve received? 

In the second reading that we heard, we heard very powerfully about scripture. 

The word of God is alive and active. In scripture and the person of Jesus, the word of God is alive. So we follow the word of God, we follow scripture. And then the last thing we heard in the gospel was that when Jesus told the rich young man, go and sell everything, he looked at the rich young man, he smiled and it says, and he loved him. 

We sit in the love of Christ. So I think those are some of our answers to what are we called to do in the midst of this gospel, which says, go sell everything. 

Be prudent, be wise, stay close to the word of God and stay close to the love of Christ Jesus that’s always with us. Be prudent, be wise, stay close to the word of God and close to the love of Jesus that’s always with us. 

I wanna share that there’s a couple that I know, I’ve known them now for about 10 years, 15 years, and they have a lot of money and I’m astounded at how much money they have. And I love watching them discern and be wise and prudent about how it is they share the gifts that God has given them so generously. They take good care of their children and they are very disciplined and beautiful with their children and they take care of their parish church. 

They make sure their parish church has what it needs and they take care of the archdiocese and they make sure the archdiocese has what it needs more recently in making a gift to renew my church, saying, “look, the spiritual renewal that “Renew my church tends to wants to undertake is powerful and it needs to happen in our archdiocese.” And they said, “I want to support that.” And they support our global church as well. 

I admire them and they’re great examples for me. 

The resources that we have were called to share generously through wisdom and prudence, staying close to the word of God among us and staying close to the love of Christ that guides our actions. For with Christ Jesus and our generous God, all things are possible.