When an illusionist needs to fool you, he does his trick in such a way that he distracts you with one hand while setting up the trick with another. So you remain focused one place, while the action is happening in another. Today’s gospel of the rich man who goes away sad is like that.

If you look where the gospel has you focused, you see it is on the man’s riches. However, the gospel is really not about money, it is about control. Notice what happens. He has been faithfully following his Jewish faith, but Jesus tells him, he is not doing enough. Why? Because he is living his faith on his own terms. Jesus calls him to live his faith on God’s terms. This is the crux of the story, it is not about money at all, but on what terms he is living his faith. Notice how Jesus tells him to follow Him, after he tells him to sell all he has. If it was about money, he would just tell him to sell all he has and continue what he is doing.

Control is a big issue for us in the faith. Especially, today. The question is not only, who is in control of my life, but also who is in control in how I live my life. Is it Jesus, or is it me? It is easy to follow  Jesus on our own terms, but hard to follow Him on His terms, even though the reward is much greater.

Notice in your own home how much there is that puts you into control. Start with that thing that many Americans call “The Clicker”. It is of course the Remote…Control. Then look at your heating system. You don’t just heat your house, you heat it to seventy degrees. You can even buy a type of mattress that makes your side of the bed fit your comfort and the other side of the bed fits a different comfort level for someone else. That is how much we are into control. Is it any wonder that our culture has a real problem with Catholics? We teach that we need to make God in control and our society preaches that we must be in control. Look at the issues, abortion, contraceptives, embryonic stem cell research, physician assisted suicide, even gay marriage, they are all about control and having our world our way. We Catholics explain that this is the road to disaster; happiness can only be found when God is in control. They, however, don’t listen.

What do we do when our will and God’s do not match. It is an important question that should affect us everything we say the Our Father. Indeed, we should ask ourselves if we can even say that prayer it is so powerful. Do you know the line, “May your will be done?” Do you really mean that?

What happens when our will and God’s will don’t match. Do we negate our will to do God’s will or do we embrace our will. If we do the former, God will do powerful things through us. If we do that latter, then we will do also do what the rich man does. We will walk away.

Today is a good time to ask if we are in control or is it God? Especially for those of us in the United States.

God bless you,

Fr. Robert J Carr
Fr. Carr is the pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in Quincy, Massachusetts (Check out and Like our facebook page) and is the editor of this blog. He is also an alliance member of the Canção Nova Community (You may also find his videos inVideos.Catholicismanew.org courtesy of iCatholic.com. He also has a regular radio program on WebRadio Canção Nova. Heard Mondays at 7pm (1900 hours) EDT/2300 UTC
You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at either the parish facebook page or the Catholicismanew Facebook page.