NOTES for Luk 18:18-27

When we encounter Christ, we face the need to choose and to give up something that has occupied His place in our lives. At that moment each person may have different idols, but the need to renounce them is the same for everyone. To someone clinging with all his strength to a lucrative position, the Lord says, “Follow Me,” and he has to leave his tax office, as Matthew the Evangelist did. Someone who wants to free himself from social ties encounters the unsettling words, “Let the dead bury their own dead.” The ruler about whom we read today in Luke’s Gospel, placing his hope in his wealth, hears, “Sell all that you own... and follow Me.” With sorrow and compassion, Christ Himself tells the disciples that making this choice is difficult. Yet at every moment in life a person must stand against the idol that is trying to crush one’s whole life beneath it—otherwise one will have to go away “sorrowful.”