ReasonForOurHope

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

New Evangelizers Post: Loving Virtue

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

In the Gospel of Luke, the Rich Young Man went to Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus quoted to him the commandments, which the young man said he kept since he was a boy. When the young man asked what else, Christ told him to give away all his possessions and follow Him. And he went away sad because he had many possessions.

Most people focus the materialism of the young man, and rightly so. But for today, I think there is another insight that Scripture is giving us as to why the man was sad. Notice that he says that he kept the commandments and yet he did not experience that fulfilling life that Christ brought. Pope Benedict XVI made clear in his book Jesus of Nazareth, that what Christ meant by “eternal life” is not primarily life after death, but a life of spiritual fulfillment, a life of joy. And this is what the young man was lacking. And I believe there is ultimately a reason why he could go any further.

It is because he made a classic mistake when thinking about the moral life:
He thought morality was about following the moral law.

You can read the entire article here.

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