Tuesday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time, May 25, 2021

Mark 10:28-31

Peter began to say to Jesus, “We have given up everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come. But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

With the Monday after Pentecost, we re-enter the region of Ordinary Time, so-called from the ordinal numbering of the weeks of the Church year outside of the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.  For nearly two thousand years this period was called the Time After Pentecost, reminding the Church faithful that we have received the graces of the Holy Spirit so that we might convert the world.  This time became “ordinary” after the Second Vatican Council.

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass follows the teaching of Jesus that it will prove hard for the rich to enter heaven.  Here, St. Peter speaks in alarm, as under the Old Law, wealth was seen as a sign that a person was living righteously.  He and the other Apostles had expected that they would be amply rewarded when the Lord Jesus reestablished the kingdom of Israel.  Now, it seems that the Lord is condemning the wealth that they had hoped for: “We have given up everything and followed you.”  As if to say, We gave up everything to follow you before you brought back the kingdom to Israel in hopes of a reward, but now you say that there will be no reward.  The Lord Jesus patiently teaches them about the true reward that they can expect by speaking in the material terms they understand.  First, he enumerates what the Apostles have left behind: “There is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel.”  Then he makes an amazing promise: “Who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses, brothers, sisters, etc.”  By stating “a hundred times more”, the Lord engages in hyperbole which leads us to wonder what he means by all these things and people.  The Lord’s promise would have unsettled the Apostles with its strangeness, but at least they were assured that the Lord knew and understood their sacrifices for him.  With the aid of the Church Fathers we know that the Lord was speaking of the spiritual, here.  The Apostles would gain very many friends, followers, and co-workers whom they would regard as their brothers, sisters, and children, as well as “houses” in heaven.  

The Lord does not hide from them that tribulations would ensue: “with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.”  As they had made sacrifices for the sake of the Gospel — in order to preach the Gospel and live out its way of life — the Apostles would incur persecution.  This persecution would keep them in the state of earthly poverty which they had accepted for Jesus’s sake, and lead them directly to eternal life, to receive the fullness of the reward the Lord had promised: fellowship with the saints in heaven.  “But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”  That is, those who were “the first” in this world because of their riches will be “last”: either “last” in the kingdom of heaven because the care of their wealth wore away their faith, hope, and charity; or, “last” in the deepest regions of hell, where their wealth will be the fuel for the flames that will scorch them forever, if they had lost their faith altogether.  But the “last” in this world: those who labor in the Lord’s vineyard day in and day out, and so never become rich or famous, will be the first admitted through the gates of heaven when the Lord comes again, or those who will ascend to the highest ranks of the saints because they possessed no earthly wealth to hold back their faith and love.