Rock the Flock Reflection

At Rock the Flock, we reflected on the Parable of the Rich Young Man from the Matthew 19:16-30.  The young man asked Jesus, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”, Jesus replied, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”  The young man, after hearing which commandments he needed to keep, told Jesus, “I have kept all these, what do I still lack?” and Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go , sell  your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Likewise, Pope John Paul II says, “reject the seduction of wealth and consumerism and subtle violence sometimes used by the mass media, these all lead to a spiritual vacuum”.

We all have a lot of possessions…what are we willing to give up in order to follow Jesus?

Our society tells us so many things that we all know just aren’t true…that we are all supposed to have the best car, the biggest house, the most possessions, that we are supposed to be greedy and that it is all about us, whatever makes us happy, that abortion is ok, that it is ok to have sex outside of marriage, that we need to get what is owed us and that we should take revenge on those who hurt us. But that is not what it is all about.

We need to stand up against society and be truly Catholic, truly Christian. We need to rebel and say that it is not ok, that we will not stand for it.

We need to stand up to our peers and stand for the truth and for what we truly believe.  Are they going to think you are weird and that maybe there is something wrong with you…probably. Will they persecute you? Maybe, but I would rather be a fool in the eyes of man than a fool in the eyes of God. I don’t want to get to heaven and have God look down on me and shake his head in disappointment, I would rather have men here on earth look down on me for what I believe to be true and think that I have wasted my life here and made a fool of myself…because it doesn’t matter what men think of us, it only matters what God thinks of us.

Did Jesus care what people thought of him when he told them that in order to have eternal life they had to eat of the flesh of the son of man and drink of his blood. No. When people began to leave and think that he was crazy, he did not turn around and tell them that he was just kidding and that it was metaphorical speech, he let them go and asked his disciples if they too were going to leave.

We have to stand up for what we believe in. We can not be complacent. We need to rebel against the wrongs that our society thinks are right. We need to be true to ourselves and really be Catholic, really truly be Christians, not just Catholics and Christians that are one way when we come to Church or Youth Group, but in the rest of the way we live…in our everyday lives when it is tough to be Christian, when we are persecuted for standing up for what is right. Jesus said, “if the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.”  John 15:18