NOTES for Mar 10:17-31
From a human point of view, every risk should be justified. Of course, the disciples did not leave behind such wealth as the devout young man had, but all the same, Peter asks the Lord about the reward. And indeed: for the sake of what are they enduring hardships, wandering with Him through the country, for the sake of what should they go after Him to the cross (the words "Take up your cross" could only have been understood by them literally)? They fully realize the answer to this question only after the Resurrection and Pentecost, when they themselves, with their whole being, see and feel the immeasurable riches of God's life that will be given to them. We too, some of us less often and some more often, ask the same question: for the sake of what? Christianity becomes unbearably heavy and stifling when it turns into a bare system of moral prohibitions, ideological prescriptions, and dogmas. Only the life of the Spirit, only the joy of prayer, gives us awareness of how much we receive already here, "amid persecutions," while we are still on the way to the Kingdom.