Daily Reflection Monday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

Jesus met quite a few people in the gospels and every single one of those meetings is an immortal lesson, an eternal lesson to us all. For Jesus never met anyone in any sense of ordinary, in any sense of casual or familiar. He never met anyone except to the very depth of their being, the very depth of their souls. No one who was ever so privileged to meet Jesus was ever the same afterwards. No one who ever met him could ever leave that encounter unchanged, unchanged completely. It is because they met the very author of love, the very creator of all compassion and forgiveness. 

We too can meet him. We too can meet him as he is. All we have to do is say yes. All we have to do is say hello. Jesus will do all the rest. But all the rest so often feels difficult and bewildering. It seems that way because we keep insisting on our own way, our own understanding. But if we can come to believe that we can let that go, let that vanish away, we can come to a new and entirely different understanding that will transform us.

I believe that the rich young man who came to Jesus, came to him seeking and humble, asking for the meaning of life, asking for the fulness, received from the Lord something he never conceived of, something he never knew. Something he never imagined. Something he deeply feared.

Jesus will always tell us the deepest truth, the deepest reality, the deepest awareness. We will always hear it with sorrow initially. But if we will hear it, if we will allow it to enter into us to our spiritual depths, to encounter our deepest fears, we will be freed. Freed from sorrow and regret, freed from all that we thought was valuable, necessary or desired. Freed from all that we thought was needed and finally embrace the one thing necessary, the will of God that alone brings us to eternity.