DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS

St. Mark 10:23-32      (2/1)   For Friday of the 36th Week after Pentecost (Friday, 31st Week)

 

Setting the Heart: St. Mark 10:23-32, especially vs. 25: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”  Long years before the Lord took flesh and dwelt among us, His Holy Prophet David, being led by the Spirit of God to perceive grave danger in wealth, warned us: “if riches flow in, set not your hearts thereon” (Ps. 61:10 LXX).  Listen carefully, Beloved of the Lord!  Where your heart is fixed, where it is “set,” that which delights it, whatever primary goal it yearns for, that becomes the defining mark that motivates your whole being.  The Lord Jesus Himself puts the matter quite simply: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt. 6:21).

Why then does Christ our God especially focus on riches?  See, He warns us three times that wealth makes it difficult “to enter the Kingdom of God” (Mk. 10:23,24,25).  Is there something inherently wrong with wealth in and of itself?  Not at all!  The danger in wealth lies in the heart’s orientation to wealth.  Thus, for fickle-hearted mankind, riches have repeatedly been a proven stumbling block, shoals upon which many have wrecked themselves, both in this life and for the age to come.  As St. Augustine of Hippo notes: “it is hard to be saved if we have them; and impossible if we love them; and scarcely can we have them, but we shall love them inordinately.”  There is the threat: to love them inordinately, to set the heart upon them.

The setting of the heart is the whole of the matter, for that upon which we set our heart determines the shape of our whole thinking and action.  If our primary attention is on gaining wealth, we may well attain our goal, or, perhaps, we may not.  Still, let us who profess Christ as our Lord heed St. Augustine: riches “are gained with toil and kept with fear.  They are enjoyed with danger and lost with grief.”  Surely let us not be so foolish as to set our heart primarily on elusive riches.

On the other hand, the Prophet David teaches the proven way: “delight thyself in the Lord, and He will give thee the askings of thy heart” (Ps. 36:4 LXX).  We “delight” in the Lord when we set our heart on heeding Him and keeping His ways, for then we shall ask only that which pleases Him and shall receive the askings of our hearts, “good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over...” (Lk. 6:38).  God, Who is rich Himself, Who owns everything, places all that we have at our disposal.  He is especially generous toward those who have set their hearts upon Him and seek “first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Mt. 6:33).

It is not difficult to understand the astonishment of the Disciples recorded in today’s gospel (Mk. 10:24, 26).  They heard the Lord well.  They understood how quickly human hearts yearn for all sorts of created entities: things, causes, people, and goals.  The Master’s declaration chilled them, made them afraid (vs. 32).  Who possibly can be saved then?  Caesarios of Arles answers clearly: “Rich and poor, listen to Christ: I am speaking to God’s people.  Most of you are poor, but you too must listen carefully to understand.  And you had best listen even more intently if you glory in your poverty.  Beware of pride, lest the humble rich surpass you.  Beware of wickedness, lest the pious rich confound you.  Beware of drunkenness, lest the sober excel you.”

Given our sin-weakened hearts and the fickleness of fallen human nature, how is it possible for us to be established in the Lord above all else?  It is Christ Himself Who is able to “establish [our] hearts blameless in holiness before [our] God and Father” (1 Thess. 3:13).  From Him let us learn to discount anything and everything that stands between us and before Him (Mk. 10:28), and let us not be “wise in [our] own conceit, but fear God and depart from all evil” (Prov. 3:7 LXX).

O Christ God, Who willed to lie in the hands of the old man Simeon as Thou didst ride in the chariot of the cherubim, deliver us from the woe of passions and save our souls.

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