WRITTEN TH. KIRYGMA
The young man who approached our Lord, my Christians, was seeking, wondering about the true life of man, which is eternal life, the life that makes man not die.

What shall I do, he says to Jesus, to gain eternal life? And the Lord naturally replied, «Keep the commandments of God.» As a Jew, the young man knew what they were, but Jesus reminded him of the last five of the ten commandments «Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.». And the young man replied that he kept all these things «from his youth», i.e. from a very young age.

But perfection was somewhere beyond, in being detached from the many material goods («he was very rich») and thus help his poor fellow men. And here begins the tragedy of this young man, and of every man, who believes that he secures life by the power of money and not by the power of God. God asked him to come out of himself in order to learn to love as He has forgiven Himself and loved us to the sacrifice of the cross.

The young man preferred the world of wealth and not the Kingdom of God, following the «logic»: if I rely on money, why do I want the Kingdom of God? If I rely on the image I make for myself, what does the Kingdom of God mean to me? If I have not learned to love, to sacrifice my own, to be giving, I am imprisoned in the prison I make to secure myself. And it is even more tragic to keep the commandments without actually having love. To have a journey of many years in the Church and to prove that I was building a tower of protection for myself. To keep the commandments not because I love my fellow man, but because I fear the wrath of God.

In essence, however, if we do not come out of ourselves through the practical observance of the commandments and through the sacramental life, we bow our heads like the young man of the passage and return to the melancholy prison of our entrenched personal and family life.

Prot. p.Pan. Megalokonomos