Wisdom 7:7-11; Psalm 90; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30
Grace and peace to you dear brothers and sisters in the Lord.
Let us begin our homily today by making a wish. You may close your eyes and pray for two things that are the most important to you at this moment (a brief pause).
If I may ask, what are the two things we prayed for?
I know many prayed for success in exams, some for a better job, for vindication in a court case, for money of course, for your family’s intention (for your husband or wife to love you, for unity and reconciliation, for children’s wellbeing, perhaps the conversion to the faith of a child or some/all of your children), for health or healing for someone, for the success of an event etc.
All these are important and because they are important I pray that the Lord will grant them.
Today, I want to preach on what is most important, something I am not sure many of us just prayed for, something many of us don’t think of, pray for or live for. Today, we are reflecting on eternal life.
In today’s Gospel, we are told that a man ran up to Jesus, knelt before Him and put this question to Him, “Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
\We won’t even bother to look at how the interaction between Jesus and this man ended. Let us focus on how it started – the concern of this young man. He had great wealth and in worldly terms, he was successful. Yet, examine his concern – he wanted eternal life. He was thinking of eternal life. He even told Jesus that for the sake of this, he had been keeping God’s commandments.
Dear friends, do we think of eternal life?
Do we long for eternal life?
Do we desire eternal life?
Do we pray for eternal life?
Do we live for eternal life?
What is Eternal Life?
It is to be happy forever with God and all the angels and saints when we finally depart this world.
Existence is not a sufficient condition for eternal life. It is something we must always keep in our minds, something we must desperately desire, pray for and live for. The vision and desire for eternal life must permeate and influence how we live and the choices we make.
Eternal life is something we can not merit but that Jesus has obtained for us through His incarnation, sacrificial death and resurrection. It is something that is now possible for us if we long for it enough and are willing to pay the price – the price of being right with God and with others, the price of letting go of what may come between us and God. No sacrifice is too much to gain eternal life with God.
Life with all its successes, pains and struggles, ambitions and meanings, sounds and visions will one day end, usually suddenly. Life is very short.
If it is not crowned with eternal life, life is vain, empty of significance, useless and a disaster. Eternal life is the crowning of life.
Even the Psalmist testifies to this – make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart.
This wisdom is the theme of our First Reading. What is true wisdom?
True wisdom is valuing and seeking eternal life with God above anything else (Matthew 6:33). It is thinking about my life after this life. It is thinking about my eternity and working towards a happy one. It is, according to the Second Reading, keeping in mind that I will give an account of myself and allowing this thought to guide my actions in this world. This is true wisdom.
Lord Jesus, give us true wisdom – the wisdom to prepare for the life after this short life, the wisdom to value eternity above temporality, the wisdom to seek eternal life above all other things that this world offers, but that we shall leave behind when we close our eyes in this world and open them in the next.
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Baraka-Gukena Okami on October 10, 2021