Sermon preached on Sunday, 18th August 1991
The Rich Young Man (St. Matthew XIX:16-26)
In
the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Lord warns us
today of how difficult it is for a man who is rich to enter the Kingdom
of God. Does it mean that the Kingdom of God is open only to destitute,
to those who are materially poor, who lack everything on earth? No. The
Kingdom of God is open to all who are not enslaved by possessions. When
we read the first Beatitude, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the Kingdom of Heaven’, we are given a key to this saying: the poor
in spirit are those who have understood that they possess nothing which
is their own. We have been created as an act of God, loved into
existence; we are offered by God communion with Him to which we have no
rights. All we are, all we possess is not our own in the sense that we
have not made ourselves, we did not create what is seemingly ours —
every thing which we are and which we have is love, the love of God and
the love of people, and we cannot possess anything because everything is
a gift that escapes us the moment we want to have possession of it and
say, "It is mine".
On
the other hand, the Kingdom of God is really the kingdom of those who
are aware that they are infinitely rich because we can expect everything
from love divine and from human love. We are rich because we possess
nothing, we are rich because we are given all things; and so, it is
difficult for one who imagines that he is rich in his own right to
belong to that kingdom in which everything is a sign of love, and
nothing can be possessed, as it were — taken away from others; because
the moment we say that we possess something which is not given us either
by God or by human care, we subtract it from the mystery of love."
"(we have been) loved into existence". o minte omeneasca nu cred ca putea sa spuna asta :)
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