Week 20 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 24.15-24; Deuteronomy 32.18-21; Matthew 19.16-22

The prophet Ezekiel interprets the death of his wife in relation to the breaking of Israel's relationship with God. It is a loss as radical and as significant as the death of a spouse. But strangely the message to the prophet is that he is not to mourn in the usual ways to show the people that they are not to mourn their loss of God either.

What can it mean? Perhaps it means that such mourning by the people could only be hypocritical considering how they have been living. It would be a case of 'crocodile tears' as the saying goes. The condition of their relationship with God is so bad that any mourning about God's departure from them will be unreal. The flash of anger at the end of the reading, continued in the verses of the psalm, seem to support this: 'you shall rot away because of your sins', the reading ends. In effect, God is saying to them 'you are dead as far as I'm concerned'.

The rich young man in the gospel reading is called to a radical following of Christ. He is not just to keep the commandments as all are called to do, but is to sell what he has, give it to the poor and then follow Jesus along the way he is taking.

Once again, through this encounter, we hear the voice of the Lord saying to his people, 'being in relationship with me is a serious business'. It involves radical choices and commitments. What mekas it possible for a person to do what Jesus asks? Even among those who are 'officially' consecrated to follow Him in voluntary poverty, how many actaully arrive at the interior freedom and trust which such a consecration involves?

'You have forgotten God who gave you birth', the psalm says. We find our sense of identity and meaning in various places - possessions, a partner, esteem, success - when our identity and the meaning of our lives is found in God fundamentally, the Creator who has brought us to birth and from whom we receive all that we have and are.

We make various attempts to break free from that dependence, to be autonomous over against God, but these attempts are bound to fail because they are built on sand, they are unreal and untrue. Only by receiving and living the radical call of Jesus, whatever our state in life, will we enter into true freedom. That is the freedom that comes from accepting our full and permanent dependence on God for absolutely everything.