Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of Mark (10: 17-27) in which a young man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Fr Paul reminds us of the teaching in last Saturday’s about how to enter the Kingdom of God like a little child, that means to be the lowest of the low; it means to enter wit no status. Today, we hear in this Gospel, Jesus teaching about the renunciation of wealth.  Jesus is stressing the damage and danger of possessions. Fr Paul says it is a curious fact that the more we have, the more we want. Conversely, those people who have less are usually the more generous with what they have.Over and over in our history as a church and in other parts of the world, people have heroically stripped themselves of all their possessions to concentrate on coming closer to God.  There is a beautiful line in this Gospel, ‘Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him’.For our prayer today, Fr Paul says we might ask  ourselves, ‘What distracts me from God? What is it that might stop Jesus looking at me with those eyes of love?’