Fr Jim Cogley
A young man came to Christ asking, ‘what must I do to have eternal life’? I believe he was asking what must I do to be happy? Jesus replied ‘keep the commandments’. The implication here was that by not keeping them would result in misery. It turned out that these he was keeping, but he was still not happy. Herein lies a truth that simply doing what is right is important, but not necessarily the way to happiness. He was a rich man, and like so many who are wealthy, his identity lay in his riches and his pursuit of happiness until then lay in acquiring more wealth. Like the millionaire who was asked, what would make him happy, and he replied ‘just a little more’, Christ’s reply much have shook him to the core, ‘Go and sell what you have and in so doing you will find real riches.’ It wasn’t that he had riches but his riches had him, and in defining himself in terms of what he had, he had lost the path to true happiness.
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