NOTES for Mar 10:17-27
The Savior's words that it is hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom have often been remembered, and are remembered now, with the difficulty understood as impossibility. But Jesus did not say "impossible"; He said "hard." Much has also been said and written about Gospel poverty. Still, the community that formed around Jesus was not a community of mendicant monks. The apostles received donations in such amounts that there was even enough for charity. Perhaps the hardest thing for the rich young man was not to give away his possessions, but to enter the community. To give up freedom. To give up his accustomed way of life. To give up the independence that a person of means could hardly fail to have. In a certain sense, to give up himself: in the apostolic community, of course, no one held anyone by force, but once a person found himself in it, once he touched the Kingdom, he could no longer become what he had been before. He could not simply go back as if nothing had happened in his life. The step offered to the young man who asked the question seemed to him, and really was, irreversible: whatever happened next, there could be no road back. He asked his question as a religious and pious person. He wanted to understand what else this amazing and strange Teacher would propose that he do. But the Teacher offered him neither new rules, nor new knowledge, nor a new morality. He offered him the Kingdom. And the young man understood everything. And, sorrowful, he stepped aside. In any case, that was more honest. This young man betrayed no one and renounced nothing. And Jesus only said after him that it is hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom.