Aladdin’s magic lamp and Solomon’s dream

Ala’ Ad-Din is the Arabic title of one of the best-known stories in The Thousand and One Nights. The chief protagonist of the tale, Ala’ Ad-Din, or Aladdin, chances upon an African magician who claims to be his uncle. At the magician’s request, Aladdin retrieves a lamp from a cave and discovers that he can summon up powerful jinn or genies to do his bidding. “Your wish is my command,” Aladdin is told, and he satisfies his desires for wealth, power and long life. Aladdin’s adventures and good fortune have left many young readers dreaming of sharing similar experiences. Imagine that you are Aladdin and that magic lamps and genies do exist. . . what would you ask for?

Solomon found himself in just such a situation in today’s first reading. Although magic did not factor into the equation, God Himself appeared to the young king Solomon in a dream, asking for his wishes. In 1 Kgs 3:5-14, Israel’s great king was told by Yahweh in a dream: “Ask something of Me and I will give it to you.” When Solomon asked for wisdom, i.e. for “an understanding heart to judge the people and to distinguish right from wrong,” he was praised by God. He had not asked for long life or riches or for the life of his enemies; because of this he was given the gift of wisdom. (Sanchez Archives). – He received the rest besides!

Additional insights on the First Reading from Fr. Tony

About a hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the Jewish community was a minority in the great cosmopolitan city of Alexandria, Egypt, cut off from the comforting religious institutions of Jerusalem, and subject to great cultural pressure from the majority who shaped and ruled this pagan Greek society. The Jews were in danger of losing their identity because of the constant temptation to follow Greek philosophy and Greek morality rather than their Faith traditions. A learned and faithful Jew assessed the situation of his fellow Jews in Alexandria and tried to bolster their faith with a book, now called Wisdom, which offered them a virtuous way of life. By “wisdom” the author meant not just worldly wisdom but a spiritual wisdom that included adherence to older Jewish traditions. Today’s first reading, taken from the book of Wisdom, teaches, somewhat analogously, that one should prefer wisdom to every other good thing. It quotes from King Solomon’s personal valuation of wisdom: “I preferred her [true wisdom] to scepter and throne and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her.” In his prayer for wisdom, the first-century BC Alexandrian Jewish wisdom teacher identifies wisdom as the greatest possession of all and contrasts it with material possessions. True wisdom comes from God; it is the ability to see things as God sees them and to understand things as God understands them. Only Divine wisdom can teach us how to live wisely and successfully in life, making wise choices. We are also invited to see Jesus as Wisdom Incarnate and, so, to give Jesus priority over everything else in our life.

In the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 90), we beg God to teach us how to use prudence to make proper judgments and choices in our lives that we may live with Him forever. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, prudence enables a person to do two things: to see one’s “true good” in any given circumstances and so recognize which good to aim for, and then helps one to discern and choose choose the means to reach this “true good”. After humility, prudence is the second-most foundational virtue.

Additional insights on the Second Reading from Fr. Tony

The Letter to the Hebrews was written to bolster the Faith of Jewish converts to Christianity. These converts faced the contempt of their former Jewish friends, and they felt nostalgia for the institutions of Judaism (rituals, sacrifices, priesthood, etc.), that were either absent or greatly transformed in their new religion, namely Christianity. This letter tries to show them in what ways the new religion of Christianity is better than their old Jewish faith. St. Paul tells them, “The word of God is something alive and active: it cuts like any double-edged sword.” The living and effective word of God has the power to penetrate our body and soul like a double-edge sword. We should allow the word of God in all its vital power and effectiveness to challenge us and our priorities and goals in life. The sharp word of God confronts, chastises, encourages, challenges, nourishes, and inspires all who will hear and receive it. Like a double-edge sword, the word has the dual capacity of revealing God to the believer and revealing the believer to him/herself. No wonder the “two-edged sword” in today’s Gospelstory of the young rich man, cuts through all our conventional ways of thinking and drives us to reflect on the things that really matter!

Additional insights on the Gospel from Fr. Tony

The rich, “good” young man’s sins of omission. Obviously, this young man who came to Jesus in search of eternal life really wanted to be accepted by Jesus as a disciple. The words “inherit eternal life” not only means life with God after death, but also entering a deeper kind of life here on earth through prayer and the following of Jesus, and through deep relationships with other people, or involvement with some noble cause. However, Jesus did not want this young man as a disciple on his own terms, but rather on Jesus’ terms. The young man claimed that, from his youth, he had observed all the commandments Jesus mentioned, including the fourth commandment. His tragedy was that he loved “things” more than people. He was trapped by the erroneous idea that he could keep his possessions for himself and still obtain God’s mercy. He failed to realize the fact that his riches had built a wall between himself and God. In other words, his possessions “possessed” him. Even though the rich young man had never killed, stolen, or committed adultery, he was breaking both the commandment forbidding idolatry and the one commanding love of neighbor. He worshiped his wealth more than God. That is why Jesus challenged him to rid himself of the attachment to wealth, wherein lay what the young man saw as his security and social status, and trust himself completely to God by following Jesus.

Why should Jesus seemingly reject the title of “good teacher” telling the young man that God alone is good? According to Venerable Bede, the One and Undivided Trinity itself—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—is the Only and One Good God. The Lord, therefore, does not deny Himself to be good, but implies that He is God; He does not deny that He is ‘good Teacher [Master],’ but He declares that no master is good except God.” Fr. John Foley S. J. (Center for Liturgy) suggests a much simpler explanation. Jesus, seeing the seeds of Faith in this man, was trying to grow that Faith. The logic of Jesus’ response would be: (1) Only God is (fully) good. (2) You have called me good. (3) Are you, perhaps, sensing the Godliness in me? Jesus’ injunction to this man was the inspiration for many saints, who have taken Jesus at His word. Perhaps the two most famous were St. Anthony of Egypt (the “Father of Monks” and writer of the first monastic rule; ca. 250-356), and St. Francis of Assisi (ca. 1182-1226), who committed himself to live a life of radical Gospel poverty.

The unaccepted challenge: Jesus realizes that this rich young man is shackled by his possessions. So, he challenges the young man by listing those precepts of the Decalogue that deal with social and familial relations. Then Jesus tells the young man that, if he wants to be perfect, keeping the commandments is not enough. He challenges the young man to share his riches with the poor: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘There is one thing lacking. Sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven. After that, come, follow Me.’” Jesus thus makes it clear that a true follower who wants to possess eternal life must not only be a respectable gentleman who hurts nobody, but also someone who shares his riches, talents and other blessings with the less fortunate. In other words, Jesus tells the young man that life is a matter of priorities. God must have the first priority in our lives. Unfortunately, the rich man is unwilling to accept Jesus’ idea that wealth is not something to be owned but rather something to be shared with others, so “his face fell and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.” Jesus challenges us to do what He asked of the rich young man — to break our selfish attachment to our “wealth” (time, talents, treasure), by sharing everything with our brothers and sisters., and so to follow Him. Our following of Jesus has to be totally and absolutely unconditional. Our attachment may be to money or material goods, to another person, a job, our health, or our reputation. We must be ready to cut off any such attachment in order to become true Christian disciples, sharing our blessings with others. We are called to be so much more than rule-followers; we are called to be Christ’s followers.

Camel through the eye of a needle: Jesus uses a vivid hyperbole, or “word cartoon,” to show how riches bar people from Heaven. The camel was the largest animal the Jews knew, and the eye of a needle the smallest hole. The needle’s eye is variously interpreted. Most probably Jesus used it literally. The little, low, narrow pedestrian gate on the outer wall of the city of Jerusalem through which even a man on foot could hardly pass erect, was also called “The Needle’s Eye” in Jesus’ time. Others have suggested that kamelos (camel) could have been a scribal or copyist’s error and should have read kamilos or cable (a ship’s thick cable or hawser rope). In either case, the difficulty of dealing carefully and conscientiously with riches is clearly affirmed. Some modern Bible scholars think that both of these interpretations are attempts to “water” down the impossibility of getting a camel through the eye of a needle, but Jesus is saying that it is not impossible, by the grace of God, for a wealthy person to keep his spiritual integrity, though it is extremely difficult and uncommon.

Why do riches prevent man from reaching God? First, riches encourage a false sense of independence. The rich think that they can buy their way to happiness and buy their way out of sorrow and, hence, that they don’t need God. Second, riches shackle a man to this earth (Mt. 6:21). If a man’s interests are all earth-bound, he never thinks of the hereafter. Instead of having security and tranquility, he is an eternal hostage of his money. Third, riches tend to make a man selfish. Fourth, Avarice, the greed for money, in addition to being idolatry, is also the source of unhappiness. The avaricious person is an unhappy one. Distrusting everyone else, miser isolates himself. But we need to understand that Jesus is not against riches as such, nor against the rich. Zacchaeus, Joseph of Arimathaea, and Nicodemus were Jesus’ close friends, and they were rich. Jesus never condemned wealth or earthly goods in themselves. What Jesus condemns is that disordered attachment to money and property which views acquiring, possessing, and hoarding them for oneself alone, as absolutely essential to maintain one’s life (Lk 12:13-21). In other words, Jesus is talking about our attitude towards wealth. There are very rich men who have acquired their wealth honestly and justly and who spend much of their wealth on charitable causes. Their wealth will not hinder them from reaching Heaven. On the other hand, there are many in the middle and lower income-bracket who may be offending against justice through the means they use to acquireand then to keep what they have, and in the little helps which they refuse to a needy neighbor. The Bible doesn’t say that money is the root of all evil; it says that the love of money is the root of all evil. Jesus also challenges the Jewish belief that material wealth and prosperity are signs of God’s blessings, while poverty is the sign of His displeasure. Jesus here condemns a value system that makes “things” more valuable than people. Finally, Jesus asserts that those who have made the kingdom of God their priority, will be well compensated both in this life with earthly blessings (accompanied by pains and suffering – this is the fallen world!), and in the next life with everlasting life.

1) We need to “Do something beautiful for God” by reaching out to others. That’s the message we need to reflect on. Our most precious possession is our soul. Let us give ourselves away and give lavishly. Mother Teresa puts it in a different way: “Do SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL for God. Do it with your life. Do it every day. Do it in your own way. But do it!”

2) We need to accept the invitation to generous sharing. Jesus’ generosity led to His free gift of His very self to save our lives eternally. The crucifix is “Exhibit A.” To follow Jesus, we must have the same kind of generosity, and be willing to give our money, time, and talents away to serve the needs of others. In the heart of every Christian there should be a desire to give. Martin Luther says that the man who has given his heart to God will also give God his wallet. God does not have to extort money from those who love him. God does not ask us to give up our riches, but He does ask us to use them wisely in His service. We must manage our possessions wisely, so that they do not gain control over our hearts. Almsgiving and donations to charities are no longer the only way to use wealth for the common good, or perhaps the most advisable. There is also honesty in paying one’s taxes, creating new jobs, giving a more generous salary to workers when the situation allows it, initiating local enterprises in developing countries, and the like. Let us also ask the question: “How do I use my talents?” God gives us talents. Hence, they are not really ours. He lends them to us to be used in this world. How do we use our talents? What about time – do we use it for God? We each get 168 hours every week. How do we use our time? Are we too busy to pray each day? Do we pray for others’ needs as well as our own?

3) “You are lacking one thing.” We all have something in our lives that serves as a major obstacle to happiness and peace. We must recognize this obstacle and address it head-on. It may not be riches — it may be anger, holding grudges, alcohol, drugs, lust, apathy, lies, unfaithfulness, theft, or fraud. Let us invite God into our lives and into our efforts to face and remove that one obstacle to holiness. We have a decision to make: whether to go away sad like the rich young man, or to follow Jesus and be happy. Let us choose happiness.

4) We need to follow Jesus on His terms, and not on our terms. This involves giving up whatever in our lives leads us to evil. That’s step one. Sometimes it may involve giving up things which are good. As parents, we might consider all the time and personal recreation and relaxation (all good things), which we have given up over the years for the sake of the children. As a mother or father who is also a disciple of Jesus Christ, this is required of us, and we make the sacrifice gladly. When we follow Jesus on His terms, there may be certain crosses to bear, but deep down in the core of our being there is peace, and there is joy, because we know that we are doing our best to carry out God’s perfect will in our lives.