Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”    

The animated movie "WALL-E" is set approximately seven hundred years in the future. The earth is over-run with garbage and devoid of plant and animal life, the consequence of years of environmental degradation and thoughtless consumerism. The only humans left are living comfortable lives on the spaceship Axiom after leaving Earth centuries earlier. The plan was that they would return after cleaning robots prepared Earth for re-habitation, but it had taken so long that only one solar powered cleaning robot remained, WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-class). WALL-E spends his lonely days compacting debris and building structures with them. He eventually meets EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) and his "life" takes on a new meaning.

The movie "WALL-E" was produced probably with no "political agenda" in mind. It is meant to entertain, and it does it in a wonderfully creative way. But the movie must call to mind what caused the adventures of WALL-E and EVE, namely, the fact that human beings have natures that want pleasure and comfort. Often they will get their satisfaction at any expense, even if it means using up the environment. In the movie, after they had satisfied themselves with using up what Earth had to give, they travel into space, continuing to please themselves completely. They eat and drink any time they want; they travel and interact with people any time they want; they enjoy themselves any time they want. And in the process, they have become obese, lazy, even unable to walk because they don't have to. They have become totally satisfied, perhaps the ultimate picture of what the pleasant life can bring.

When Jesus spoke about the rich, the evangelist Matthew simply reports that the apostles "were astonished, and said, ‘Who then can be saved?'" Jesus' words were difficult and his disciples seemed to have understood that many people were not following them. People wanted riches and devoted themselves to riches and pleasure even within the poverty of the first century. Jesus knew that one of the problems of being rich was that they would spend too much time pleasing themselves, and in the process forget about others and their importance. And so, he reminds his followers that whether we are rich or poor, we must not lose track of what is really important.

There is nothing wrong with being rich, with using the talents that we have in order to make money, even a lot of money. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with pleasure, even at times total relaxation. But Jesus reminds us in very strong language that there is something wrong when we lose sight of the most important things in life. If we want eternal life as our final destination, we must study the drawbacks that keep us from attaining it. One of them is what happens with the rich--they have a tendency to please themselves too much, and forget about what is really important.              

THOUGHT
 
PRAYER

Good and gracious God, we like to please ourselves, and unfortunately, we sometimes like to please ourselves too much. Help us listen to the difficult words of your Son, and give us the grace to never lose track of what is most important in life, even as we enjoy our existence here on earth. Be with us, we pray. 

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©2007 Capuchin Province of Mid-America
Fr. Mike Scully is a member of the Capuchin Province of Mid-America