For God everything is possible

Fr Paul reads today’s Gospel from Matthew (19: 23-30) in which Jesus tells his disciples that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Fr Paul asks us to recall yesterday’s Gospel about the rich young man’s encounter with Jesus. In the final line of that Gospel ‘the young man went away sad’.

Today’s Gospel continues in some sense that encounter, which is written about in Mark, Matthew and Luke. After Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man, all three writers go on to talk about the image of a camel and the eye of a needle because there is a further teaching of Jesus for those who accept the challenge.

In this Gospel, we hear Peter asking a very normal and natural question that anyone of us might have asked. Peter, basically, says ‘Well, we’ve left everything, what do we get out of this?’ Jesus responds that the disciples must be prepared to wait until after the death and resurrection of Jesus and then they will be rewarded, a hundred-fold and with the gift of eternal life.

Fr Paul invites us, for our prayer today, to reflect and pray about this question “Are we prepared to wait for our reward or have we been infected with the ‘I want it now’ instant gratification mentality?”