None is Good but One, that is God

Gospel Reflection for October 13, 2024 - Mark 10:17-30

And when he was gone forth into the way, a certain man running up and kneeling before him, asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may receive life everlasting?

And Jesus said to him, Why callest thou me good? None is good but one, that is God.

Thou knowest the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, bear not false witness, do no fraud, honour thy father and mother.

But he answering, said to him: Master, all these things I have observed from my youth.

And Jesus looking on him, loved him, and said to him: One thing is wanting unto thee: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.

Who being struck sad at that saying, went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looking round about, saith to his disciples: How hardly shall they that have riches, enter into the kingdom of God!

And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus again answering, saith to them: Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches, to enter into the kingdom of God?

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Who wondered the more, saying among themselves: Who then can be saved?

And Jesus looking on them, saith: With men it is impossible; but not with God: for all things are possible with God.

And Peter began to say unto him: Behold, we have left all things, and have followed thee.

Jesus answering, said: Amen I say to you, there is no man who hath left house or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for my sake and for the gospel,

Who shall not receive an hundred times as much, now in this time; houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions: and in the world to come life everlasting. (Mark 10:17-30 DRA)

As sometimes happens, the readings for this Sunday could at first seem incongruous. The overall theme of the first reading, the Psalm and the Epistle appears to be the gift of wisdom, yet the Gospel makes no mention of wisdom. But, through the canonical exegesis of Scripture, read as one whole with one divine Author, we can see that in fact wisdom is also the theme of this Gospel passage. Here, Christ gives one of the most profound and important teachings in history: “None is good but one, that is God.” It can be seen here that He is indirectly revealing His own divinity, since He doesn’t deny the young man’s description of Him as good, but the point can also be applied directly to us. It’s easy to miss, especially when heard in passing at Mass, but we should stop and reflect on its almost shocking truth: only God is truly good. All goodness in Creation is only a reflection of and participation in His goodness – nothing possesses good intrinsically and nothing is the Good itself except God. Creatures can only be called good analogically, by comparison to Him.

In what is greater wisdom to be found than this? Is there any other principle, any clearer reminder of our humility and our utter dependance on God than Our Lord’s bold statement? This is the heart of philosophy, or “the love of wisdom,” the desire not only to know truths about Creation or even about how to live a morally upright life and find true happiness: the greatest goal of philosophy is to know the True, the Good and the Beautiful themselves – that is, to know God, and to live in this knowledge of Him in all that we do. What other foundation for this can there be than to realize His utter transcendence, His divinity as the Source of being itself, as infinite Being containing all perfections?

Catholic philosophy, taking revelation as its data, has sought to find this divine Wisdom throughout history, and, as Pope St. John Paul II taught in his great encyclical Fides et Ratio, this pursuit is not superfluous to the Faith but is absolutely necessary both for theology and for the life of the Church as a whole. And, as Vatican I’s Dei Filius taught, we can know God’s existence and divine attributes by this rational pursuit of wisdom even prior to revelation (an important point to remember when dialoging with atheists, who tend to equate belief in God with religion), echoing the teaching of Scripture: “For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby.” (Wis 13:5)

But how does this relate to Christ? St. John has made the connection for us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (Jn 1:1) Jesus Christ is the Word of the God, but this word, Logos in Greek, means not merely an ordinary spoken word as in human speech, but the Reason of God, the Logic at the heart of the Trinity and the Wisdom which perfectly reflects the Father and by which God “hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.” (Wis 11:21) God Himself is pure Reason and His Creation, as well as salvation history, reflect this. Therefore, to know Christ and to obey His commandments is true Wisdom, to prioritize Him above all created things – not to hate His Creation, which He made out of love, but to love it in proper order, as a gift from God but not a substitute for Him.

This is the great pervasive evil of our time, and indeed in all history, the deepest root of sin: the attempt to exclude or minimize God, to prioritize created goods above Him, whether our own power, wealth, health, attractiveness, popularity or social acceptance, our favorite sins or our private interpretations of Scripture, our national interests or our friends’ opinion of us, the prevailing philosophies of the day or simply our own ease and comfort – anything at all that we value above God. This was the lesson of Christ’s temptations by Satan in the desert: would He, as a man, ultimately prefer bodily nourishment, or political power, or human tests of God’s existence and goodness, or our subjective moral standards, or our personal conception of what the Savior must do, or, like Satan, an interpretation of Scripture which violates its authentic meaning and the teaching authority of the Church but which is more easily digestible? Where Adam failed in this, Christ succeeded; the same temptations are put to us today and every day. As Pope Benedict XVI taught with timeless clarity and poignancy:

At the heart of all temptations… is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion – that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms… We are dealing here with the vast question as to how we can and cannot know God, how we are related to God and how we can lose him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him, by discarding the whole dimension of love, of interior listening; by no longer acknowledging as real anything but what we can experimentally test and grasp. To think like that is to make oneself God. And to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself, too. (Jesus of Nazareth)

(Cover image source: By Андрей Николаевич Миронов (A.N. Mironov) - Own work, Andrey Mironov See also ticket:2015070410013036http://artmiro.ru/photo/religija_zhanrovaja_kartina/khristos_i_junosha/4-0-224, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59264329)

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See my article, “The Necessity of Reason,” for more on this topic!