If you wish to be perfect

18 AUGUST (Mt 19,16-22)

Seeing life from the goodness of God and seeing it from the desires of the own heart, are not the same thing. There is an eternal abyss of goodness, truth, holiness, justice, mercy, pity, compassion, consolation, hope and self-realization. The Commandments of the Old Law are the first stage in order to live life according to the goodness of our God. They were donated in a desert. Reading this event in spiritual and allegorical terms, we could say that they are indispensable, that which one can never do without in order to cross harmless the desert of life. But they are not the utmost of the goodness of God, of his truth, of his charity, from which is also the goodness, the truth and charity of every man. Without Commandments one dies in the desert of history. And today man is dying in the desert due to his superb and arrogant will with his which he decided that the Commandments are of no use to him.

Jesus came to teach every man to see his own life not from the indispensable, not from what he needs only to cross harmless his own desert, but from the divine perfection of the charity and goodness of God. He came to propose himself as the inseparable model of this choice. In fact, who is he? He is the total gift of the charity and truth that the Father has given to mankind for its eternal redemption. However, since his only life, his only gift is not sufficient, is not enough; today, he makes this proposal, he addresses a strong, firm invitation to a person so that he also leaves the almost nothingness of the observance of the Commandments and delivers himself entirely to the charity and truth of God for the salvation of his brothers.

The delivery of man to the fullness of the charity and truth of God is fulfilled already in the Beatitudes. Even in the Beatitudes there is the minimum and the maximum, there is the little and the much, there is imperfection and perfection. In them there is the possibility to take care of the things of this world, but also an explicit invitation to devote oneself to the things of the spirit and of God, in order to give every man the knowledge of the truth, to invite him to let be submerged in divine charity. Today, Jesus asks this man that spends his life in the cultivation and the increase of his wealth, to leave everything, sell everything, give the revenue to the poor and then return to follow Him on the way of the mission. This man is invited to immerse himself in the perfection of the charity and goodness of God. He is called to be the living image of the Gift of the Father, that is Jesus the Lord.

Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, ” ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honour your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself.'” The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to (the) poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

The proposal of Jesus of supreme perfection, supreme imitation of the goodness and charity of the Father who delivers his Only Son to death to show the world all his love, his forgiveness and his mercy, saddens this man. He leaves with his face grim. In fact, he possessed a great wealth. However, he lacked the true good. He was devoid of true wealth. This is the perfect logic of God: in order to receive you have to abandon, to receive you have to deprive yourself, to rise it is necessary to get rid of what is pure ballast. To fill a jug of cool and refreshing water it is necessary that first it is emptied of the mud that is in it. This parson was asked by Jesus to empty his pitcher of all the false wealth to put into it the one and only true. The fake good, the ephemeral good tempts him, attracts him and conquers his heart. Between the choice of Jesus that he should have made and the renunciation of his property, he chooses the goods and leaves Jesus sadness. Sadness arises from the impossibility of being able to reconcile the two. Either the one or the other.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints, help us choose the good.