A vocations story based on Wisdom and Righteousness 

Today our readings are all about the vocation’s journey—a vocation to the priesthood, to religious life or to family and married life. For each of these vocation calls us to empty ourselves individually and seek the “common good,” whether that “good” is for Christ and His Church or for the family-it is a faith-filled and lived journey.

In our first reading from the Book of Wisdom, a sage seeks holiness and righteousness above all other things. He sees all other material things-from wealth, power and privilege to even physical beauty—as nothing compared to the Wisdom and Understanding of God. For in God, which Wisdom is understood as the feminine persona of God, all the material goods of the world are brought to perfection in holiness. In the second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, God’s Word is alive and full, complete and penetrating because as we know it seeks only one thing: the excellence of the other. God’s Word is Truth—absolute Truth. And it can only seek to give us wisdom and to lift us up to be that which God created us to be, to paraphrase St. Catherine of Siena.

Today’s Gospel from Mark (10:17-30) has a young man seeking his own vocation, if you will, he is seeking Wisdom and comes up and kneels before Jesus to obtain His Wisdom on life. The young man asks Him what he must do—the righteous life—in order to inherit the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells him the commandments to follow, and the young man responds with “but I’ve already done that!” Jesus tells him that he is lacking one thing: “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” “The young man’s face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions” (attachments).

After that, it seems that Jesus goes off on a disconnected tangent about the wealthy and their inability to enter into heaven as if possessing wealth is an obstacle to the heavenly kingdom on its own. But the obstacle is not in possessing wealth or material items but rather in the items or wealth possessing us, that is in defining who we are. Are we owned by what we own or are they goods and service to enrich us to be disciples of Christ? And it is all in the application.

Wealth, power, beauty and privilege are not evil unto themselves, for they too are creations of God. The evil is in the desire for them and how we utilize them. To gain more beauty, power or money for their own sake or for benefit of one, equals misusing them. But when the goods of this world are meant to better the lives of others, then they serve a noble purpose, to lift up the common good. And this noble purpose happens when we are owners of a good and employ those goods for the many rather than being owned or defined by the wealth, beauty, power or privilege. The desire for more money or power clouds the purpose of our lives, for we have been created by God to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world so that we may live with Him in the world to come. The blindness of being possessed by the material good is what keeps us from entering into the Kingdom; it is akin to the impossibility of a camel going through the eye of a needle. When we, however, obtain or posses the earthly good and use it for a greater good, then nothing is impossible for God, and we may then accomplish His Will and enter into His Kingdom.

As we all enter into our vocation journeys—whether it is a vocation to the priesthood or religious life or to family life, we all are called to firstly seek the Wisdom of God (to come to know Him), then we are called to employ it in a righteous manner for the Will of God. Vocation journeys are all difficult, like a camel passing through the eye of a needle, but with God nothing is impossible—not even the vocation journey. God