Tuesday, Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

Jesus’ image of a camel passing through the eye of a needle has been spoke of as an example of comic exaggeration. The person with the plank in their eye would be another example. Jesus often used such comic exaggeration to get people’s attention and perhaps to shock them out of a sense of complacency. When Jesus said to would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven the astonished disciples ask, ‘Who can be saved, then?’ Jesus’ reply, ‘For people, this is impossible; for God everything is possible’, suggests that the attaining of salvation is primarily God’s doing rather than our doing. It is a divine attainment rather than a human one. We can only enter into the life of God with the help that God alone can give us. We need to depend fully on God to enter the kingdom of heaven, opening ourselves up in our poverty to his gracious working on our behalf. This is where Jesus sees the problem with excessive attachment to wealth or possessions. If we seek our security in wealth or possessions, we will cease to rely on God who alone gives access to salvation, to life in abundance. If we place our security in God, in the Lord, then, according to Jesus in today’s gospel reading, we will be abundantly repaid in this earthly life, and also inherit eternal life.