NOTES for Mar 10:23-32

As if clarifying His earlier words, Jesus says: it is hard for one who trusts in riches to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It would seem that there is hope in these words: one can be rich while relying not on what one has, but on God. In practice, however, everything proves much more complicated.

The disciples are horrified: they are sure that they will not see the Kingdom. Peter, more decisive than all the rest, as often happened, asks the Teacher the question that everyone wanted to ask but was afraid to. He says to Jesus: look, we have left everything and followed You. Is that not enough? Is something else needed? What will we receive after doing what we have done? Who are we, rich or poor? What are we hoping in?

Such questions are usually asked when something incomprehensible is happening. And that is how it was: the apostles truly understood almost nothing. They trusted the Teacher, but they always had difficulty understanding Him. And now a real theater of absurdity was beginning, behind which something so terrible could already be seen that the apostles were paralyzed by the very thought of that horror.

Jesus points them to the only way out: to look only to the Kingdom, to live only by it, to abide in it constantly. To the question "what will there be for us?" He answers: not "will be," but "is," already here and now. And ahead of you something still more joyful awaits. But if you do not see it, if you cannot receive it here and now, there will be no "later." For the Kingdom has already drawn near. And one must enter it now, without putting it off until later.