Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.

There are many theories about this reading. I have heard it said that the “eye” was a small door to the temple, and the rich man would have to unload all of his belongings in order to get himself and his camel through the opening. But Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers has sufficiently dismatled this argument on his website, showing that this door did not actually exist, and that it was only story that made sense, and took on a life of its own. I have heard others say that the “camel” is a kind of thick cable or rope used on ships that is far too large to pass through the very small eye of the needle. But this is a presumption based on different translations and posible idoms at the time, so we cant be sure that this is the meaning either.

There are other theories as well that are even more elaborate, but I think that they distract from the actual point. The real point of this analogy is that it will be hard for all people to enter into heaven, not just rich people. I have heard theologians say that death is the ultimate stripping away of everthing in your life. You can lose your personal dignity, because of helplessness. You can lose control over your physical body if you are sick or elderly. If you are accustomed to power in your life, you will lose it, and if you are accustomed to wealth, you will not be able to take it with you. Nobody takes any of the “things” that we have accumulated in this life, into the next. You literrally will enter the next life as naked and helpless as you were when you were born.

And that, I think, is the point of this reading. The more you have in this world, control, power, possessions, the harder it will be for you to have those things stripped away from you in the next. This reading is about attachment to things, but mostly about attachment to sin. We all must come to accept and understand, that we will have to give up everything before we can enter into heaven. As such, Jesus is warning us, and urging us to start now. He wants us to get into a habit of giving and sacraficing now, so that when our time comes we will be ready and well practiced for what will come next.

I dont think that we are being called to be like St. Francis and give everything away in this world, but I do think that there is an important message here about not allowing yourself to be so connected to those things, that the idea of losing them is impossible to imagine. If you lost your job, got into a car wreak, and your house burned down, ALL on the same day, What would you do next? that is what Jesus wants you to consider right now. At the end of the day those are all just things, and are nothing compared to what god has planned for those that love him.

Oh lord help me to be able to look at the world in the way it is, temporary, and ephemeral, and to instead focus on you and eternity with you in heaven. Amen.