Yesterday we encountered a young man who would not give up his possessions to follow Jesus, and we reflected on what, in our own lives, do we hesitate to let go of in order to follow Jesus more nearly. Today Peter says to Jesus “We have given up everything and followed you” as if to say, “What’s in it for us?”
How often we find ourselves asking the same question of Jesus and the Church! When we are confronted with the demands of Christian life we can easily focus on what we will get out of it: if I give up X or start doing Y, what do I gain? The rich young man thought the same, and when he weighed his possessions against the prospect of following Christ, he saw only loss. What he failed to consider, however, is that those who follow Jesus follow Him all the way to Heaven, if they follow faithfully: to give up what we possess for the sake of the Gospel means all the more room in our life for the riches God has to offer us in the life to come. In fact Jesus promises reward “…in this present age…” equivalent to a hundred times more than what we give up! And yet we hesitate. We settle for a soft expression of our faith, an easy road: a Christianity without the Cross.
To overcome this weakness it is helpful to consider the matter from Christ’s perspective. What if in our Gospel today, instead of Peter speaking, Jesus had turned to His apostles and said, “I have given up everything that you might follow me?” How often we forget the sacrifices Jesus made for the sake of our salvation! “…he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…” (Philippians 2:7), and “…for your sake he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). He held you and your eternal soul as a gift so precious that He would depart Heaven for this world, put aside His divinity, become a poor man, suffer and die, that you might stand to inherit all that He forsook. It is astounding if you take only a moment to consider it. It is humbling when we consider the many times we refused to give up something, to suffer some small thing, for His sake, when He has given all and suffered all for us.