Homily for the Memorial of St. Benedict of Nursia, Abbot

          

    An old saying states: “when we stand before the Lord, we leave behind all we have and take with us all that we are.” In today’s Gospel reading, Peter asks Jesus “what’s in it for me after all of this? I have given up everything to follow you. What can I expect in return?” From a human standpoint, this is a reasonable question. Peter is still thinking with the mind and heart of a man, but he is not thinking with the heart and mind of God. Jesus reminds him that whoever gives up his earthly attachments and follows him will receive much more in heaven – he will receive eternal life.

          How often as baptized Christians do we repeat Peter’s mistake? In your 'yes' to follow Jesus Christ, we have promised to give up ‘everything’ to one degree or another and yet at times we find ourselves asking what is to come from it. “How big a truck can I buy? Will my 'McMansion' have a gourmet kitchen, a media room with a 120” TV, a study that smells of rich mahogany and has many leather-bound books? How can I curry favor with my boss and get a nice promotion? What kind of boat or retirement home can I buy?” That is a humanly instinctual mindset grounded in the self and not in the Gospel. Jesus reminds us today that none of that stuff matters – all of it will pass away. Immediately before this reading is the parable teaching how it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man, a person attached to material things, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  

All of us have stuff, some more, some less – goods that we own and use. But the determining question is who we become as we make use of all that stuff, and to what purpose do we direct the use of all that stuff. The Rule of St. Benedict teaches that the Instruments of Good Works are those that lead us toward God. St Benedict teaches that one is to deny oneself in order to follow Christ, to not become attached to pleasures, and to prefer nothing to the love of Christ. Even our stuff. Anything that leads us away from God or obscures another from seeing Christ in us is to be discarded.

Not many of us are Benedictines, nor any other kind of monk. Yet St. Benedict’s Rule rings true to the Gospel and for us. To God, what matters is who we are… not what we have, and not what we aspire to have someday. 

            St. Joseph, Lover of Poverty, Pray for us!