We remember this story for its sad ending, and so we miss the extraordinary thing in the middle of it. A man who has everything admits, out loud and to a stranger's face, that something is missing. Today's readings gather around that admission and refuse to let us treat it as someone else's problem.
And behold, one came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments." He said to him, "Which?" And Jesus said, "You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The young man said to him, "All these I have observed; what do I still lack?" Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." When he heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions. (Mt 19:16-22)
Listen first to the shape of his question. "What good deed must I do, to have eternal life?" It is the question of a successful man, spoken in the language of acquisition. He has obtained his standing and his great possessions by effort, and he assumes heaven is obtained the same way: one more task, the last line on a well-managed list. He has come to close the file.
Jesus' first answer seems to dodge him. "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good." It is not a dodge; it is the lesson in advance. Before any list of deeds, Jesus turns the young man's eyes from a thing to a person. Goodness is not a commodity; it is Someone. The whole conversation that follows is a patient attempt to change the subject from having to belonging.
Then come the commandments, and notice which ones. Jesus quotes only the second table of the Law, the commandments about the neighbor, crowned by the summary: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. He has kept them all, and there is no reason to doubt him. He is young, serious, morally in order.
Then he says the truest sentence of his day: "What do I still lack?" A man with full barns confessing an empty place. The hollow he feels is not a failure of his religion; it is the success of it. The commandments have done their work and brought him to the edge of themselves. That ache in the middle of a comfortable life is often the first movement of a vocation, and it is grace.
Jesus' reply is not a punishment but an invitation in five verbs: go, sell, give, come, follow. The first three exist for the sake of the last two. The man is not asked to end up with nothing; he is offered a different treasure, one that walks ahead of him on the road. Treasure in heaven is not deferred payment for misery; it is the company of the one who is good.
The first reading gives the same lesson in a far darker key. God tells Ezekiel: I am taking from you the delight of your eyes at a stroke. His wife dies that evening, and the prophet is commanded not to mourn, as a sign that the Temple, the delight of Israel's eyes, is about to fall. It is one of the hardest pages in the prophets, and it says what we prefer not to think about: the thing we treasure most can be taken in a single evening.
Set the two scenes side by side and the Gospel looks different. From Ezekiel, everything was simply taken. To the young man, the giving was proposed. He was offered the chance to hand over freely, with his own hands, what loss will one day demand of us all anyway. That is the mercy hidden inside the hard sentence. To give before it is taken is the difference between an offering and a bereavement.
The canticle from Deuteronomy names the sickness underneath: "You forgot the God who gave you birth," and Israel stirred his jealousy with what is no god. That is the Bible's blunt name for a treasure that has taken God's chair. Possessions are not evil, but none of them has ever loved us. The young man went home that day to everything he owned and to nothing that knew his name.
He is the only person in the Gospels recorded as leaving Jesus sad, and his sadness is the strange hope of the story. His grief means he understood exactly what he had just declined; people who refuse cheaply walk away whistling. And Matthew, deliberately, does not tell us the end of his road. The story is left open because the door was left open. Sorrow of that kind has brought many people back.
Nothing in this scene condemns wealth as such; the question is not how much we have but what our hands are too full to receive. There is a logic of Bethlehem in this: when God wanted to give humanity his entire treasure, he arrived owning nothing, a child in a feeding trough, asking not for payment but for room. Whoever wants to pick that Child up must put other things down first. It is not a tax; it is how carrying works.
This page of Matthew has a long history of being taken at its word. Hearing it read aloud sent Antony into the desert, and some version of it stands near the beginning of most missionary lives: an ordinary room, an ordinary day, and the words come, follow me suddenly sounding like a personal address. Generations have left careers and inheritances to go where they were sent, and their letters home agree on one point: the trade was unfair, and in their favour.
So we end where the young man began, because his question is ours. Most of us carry a quieter version of it under our routines: things are in order, and something is missing. The answer will not be one more achievement, purchase or plan. It is a person, still passing by, still looking at us with love, still saying come. What do we still lack? Usually nothing but the courage to open our hands.
Scripture text: Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV), public domain.
Prayer of the Day
Lord Jesus, you looked at a good young man and offered him more than goodness: you offered him yourself, and he went away sad because his hands were full. Look at us the same way. You know the delight of our eyes, the possessions and plans and securities we hold, and that quietly hold us. Give us the honesty to ask what we still lack, and the courage to hear your answer without walking away. Teach us to give freely, while it is still an offering, what time will one day take from us in any case, and let the empty place in us become the room where you are received. And if we have already gone away sorrowful once, call us again. Amen.
For Meditation
- What is the delight of our eyes, and could we name it aloud to God without being afraid that he will ask us for it?
- Where have we been using the commandments we keep as a wall against the deeper call we suspect is coming?
- If Jesus looked at us today and said one thing is lacking, what do we already know he would name?
