To read the Gospel story of Jesus and the Rich Young Man is to look in a mirror: every single one of us has come to Jesus in one way or another, and when asked to let go of something for His sake, we refuse. We become disciples who follow Jesus, but only so far: “I will follow you, Jesus, but…”
There are many in the Church today who could honestly repeat the words of the young man, “Teacher, all of these [commandments] I have observed from my youth.” Indeed it is not terribly difficult to go throughout life without committing murder, adultery, theft, and so on. But the Ten Commandments are not the key code to the gates of Heaven, either; Jesus did not promise Heaven to those who follow the commandments, but rather to those who follow the Greatest Commandment, from which the Ten Commandments follow: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38). Jesus knows our hearts, just as He knew the heart of the young man in our Gospel. And Jesus loves you, just as we read “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” Yet Jesus saw that the young man’s heart was occupied with loving something other than God: his wealth and possessions. You may say, “Father, if he follows the commandments doesn’t he love God?” Yet in our Gospel he chooses his wealth and possession over and above Jesus, testifying that when it came to making a choice, Jesus took second place. He forfeited an eternal treasure for the temporary treasure he had here on earth. Indeed “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!”
Perhaps for you it is not wealth or possession; perhaps it is food, or pleasure, or free time, or convenience, or certain people and relationships. There are many things that we cling to, but Jesus tells us “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Matthew 6:21); if we are unwilling to give up whatever it is that occupies space in our hearts that Jesus could otherwise occupy—even if it is not inherently sinful!—then is our heart really with God, or is it with the world? If we feel that God is inviting us to let go of something or someone in order to follow Him more closely and love Him more exclusively and we refuse, are we not breaking that Greatest Commandment to love God with our whole heart, as He loves us with His?
The ultimate goal of Jesus’ saving work within us is to make us more and more like Himself, like Children of the Father, that we might be welcomed into the Father’s House one day. But if we would rather cling to things of this world for fear of losing them—forgetting all the while that we will lose them anyways when we die—then do we really want Heaven at all? If we cannot let go of the things that keep us from drawing closer to the Heart of God then we, like the young man in our Gospel, will go away sad, which carries with it the real possibility of an eternal sadness. “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mark 8:36)
Let us withhold nothing from Christ, as He has withheld nothing—nothing!—from us.