Homily

There are certain useless things that parents may often do when raising their children, and one of them is what I call the Useless Question.  Let us say your young daughter gets ahold of a glue bottle and starts to glue everything in sight to the kitchen table.  Now here is the useless question:  "Why did you do that?"  Isn't it kind of crazy to ask a young glue addict why she just couldn't control her impulse once she got her hands on the Elmer's?  But what if it's your 12 year old son and you catch him smoking a cigarette behind the garage?   "Why did you do that?"  It's a useless question, because he doesn't really understand exactly why he did it.   The best answer you will get is, "I just wanted to try it and see what it's like."  Not very satisfying for Mom or Dad, but if he cannot really understand why he tried it himself, how can he explain it to someone else?

Isn't it true that we say and do things that we cannot truly explain?  We're more sophisticated and experienced than a 12 year old boy, so if we need to, we can usually come up with some great or at least plausible explanations for why we said it or did it.  But we all know that we cannot always explain our behavior, we cannot always understand why we act or react in this way or that way.  We can be as strong as we can be in declaring, "I'll never do that again," until the next time that we do it.  We can lie to cover up even the smallest of faults rather than admit to them. We react with strong emotions to something that shouldn't really bother us.  We can be fearful over things that are unlikely to happen or get very angry over small inconveniences and troubles.  We often do not understand our own behavior completely, and so it should be no surprise that our children may not be able to explain theirs.

We are not simple.  Our inner life is not always so clear and obvious to us.  We cannot always explain our thoughts, our ideas, our emotions, our impulses, our spiritual motivation and how grace is guiding us, and how all these things fit together.  In today's Gospel, we see the rich young man coming to Jesus, I think with a great deal of sincerity and a genuine desire for eternal life.  I believe he was honest when he answered Jesus about obeying the Commandments that Jesus had asked him about.  I don't think it was a boast for him to honestly declare he had accomplished a great deal of virtuous living, and that he believed he was ready to do anything else necessary to gain eternal life.  Then Jesus tells him what he has to do.  And the man who thought he knew himself so well is surprised to find out that he was wrong.

Our inner life is complex and even though we would like to think we truly understand ourselves, if we're honest, we know it's not completely true.  There are many times when we can't explain our own behavior and reactions, even when we try.  And just because we can come up with explanations many times, that does not guarantee our explanations are objectively correct.  Even St. Paul lamented that his desire was to do good and yet he still found himself committing sin, and he experienced deeply this inner turmoil.  I often find that people, taking a cue from modern psychology, believe that it's important to understand why they, or other people, do certain bad things or act in certain ways.   If only they could understand the reasons underneath, then things would be different, or they could change for the better.  It is helpful: there can be a benefit to asking ourselves why we do this or that, why we think or behave in certain ways.  It can be helpful, but it is never a perfect solution for a better life, because: 1) what we think is the answer or reason may not be true; and 2) even if we know why we behave, where is the power to behave better, or think better, or perceive better?

There can be some good in trying to understand our inner life, but it has a limited value.  Instead of spending too much time on that, we would do infinitely better to ask the Lord to show us what might be keeping us from eternal life and asking Him to help us have the courage to give up anything and everything that is keeping us from following Him more closely.

Knowing what was wrong with his spiritual life did not, by itself, help the rich young man follow the Lord.   But we who know Jesus, if we continue to desire and press on to follow Him more closely, if we are willing to surrender ourselves more and more so that we can draw nearer to Him as true disciples, we come to understand and believe that we were not born just to live.  We were born to live in Him.