Who then can be saved?

19 AUGUST (Mt 19,23-30)

With just the Commandments it is difficult to cross the desert of history. The temptations are endless. Satan never gets tired of asking for our soul, our spirit and our mind. He never give up to the will of dragging us off the road. He wants our spiritual death to be transformed into an eternal death. Jesus sees this heavy difficulty of men and says it with unequivocal words: “Hardly will a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven.” Not because he is rich, but because he becomes the servant of his wealth.

Wealth is a means. When it becomes an end, in the scope of the personal life, the greatest dehumanization of the person is carried out. He is debased. From lord of all creation he becomes the servant of things, a slave to them, works for them and he pines away for them. At the end he is torn, devoured, stripped of all dignity by things, because he is deprived of God, his supreme and only true, eternal good. For this reason, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” It is difficult to enter the kingdom of God when we are slaves of wealth. It is a demanding boss. To serve it, you have to sell God, the personal conscience and your brothers. When one is a slave to it, a man loses his humanity.

The kingdom of God gives man his true humanity. It gives him a humanity even more admirable than the one received by the first man and the first woman. It gives him a humanity made whole partaker of the divine nature. The new humanity is the raising to the adoptive progeny of God. In this elevation God makes us partakers of His divine and eternal charity. He makes us a gift, his gift, for the redemption of the world. He gives us in the same way that he offered Jesus Christ. In the new humanity one becomes a victim of love, charity, salvation and justification of our brothers. For this to happen freedom from all the things of this world is necessary. We can be a gift if we are free. If we delivered us to things, things and not God are our master.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” Then Peter said to him in reply, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

Nothing is impossible with God and his grace, because nothing is impossible to the man who kneels down and asks in a heartfelt prayer to the Lord that he bends his heart for the reception of all the divine will. Furthermore, Lord Jesus himself offered us the example. He, rich, very rich of his human life, before the mystery of his passion and death, could also have refused the highest perfection the Lord called him to; however, at the condition of selling his body, giving it to the poor, that is, to the whole of humanity and then following him even to the cross.

Jesus did not consider it a hidden treasure his being equal with God and with men. In the Olive Garden he prayed sweating blood. He was able to sell his body and give it to the poor humanity forever from the cross and the altar; he followed the Father, now he shines in the highest perfection in Heaven with a glorified, spiritual, immortal and incorruptible body. The risk for every man is that of desiring to appropriate himself of the wealth of his body, and make only a selfish use of it. On the contrary, if he gives it the dimension of a gift, of charity, love, holiness, of donation, he will enter into that earthly and heavenly perfection that will make him the perfect instrument of salvation and redemption for the world.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us perfect for our God.