Placing Our Trust in God

Homily for Tuesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

The image of the camel passing through the eye of a needle does not make much sense to us, but it would have made sense to Jesus’ listeners. The image alludes to entering a walled city with a camel loaded with goods. In order to pass through the gate into the walled city, everything would have been unloaded first. With that in mind, we can easily see that what Jesus is saying is that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, we must first rid ourselves of all the cargo, all the burdens we carry. Even if our material wealth is small, we can become attached to that which we have and resist giving it up.

The story of Gideon from the Book of Judges illustrates this concept from a different perspective. Gideon must unload his negative attitude toward himself and his place in the tribe of Manasseh. The whole purpose of stripping ourselves of material wealth is found in developing an attitude of trust in God. When Jesus sends the disciples out to preach the nearness of the Kingdom of God, he asks them to take nothing for their journey and to place their trust in the providence of God’s care. Gideon obviously needs to do the same thing. He must set aside his fear of the Midianites and accept the mission that God asks of him with a trusting attitude.

Cultivating such detachment is difficult. It isn’t just about giving something up; it is about having faith and trust in God, and about relying on God over and above all our material possessions and our relationships. It is about believing that all things are possible for God. God’s self-revelation in the person of his Son, and the continued presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, is proof that God will not abandon us.