Mt 19:23-30. The Great Counsel of Poverty and its Rewards (20e Tues. A)Jesus says to His disciples: “Ah, how difficult it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!” The disciples areastonished, disconcerted, struck down by these words. Yet Jesus had already indicated to them the danger ofriches, the blessing of poverty, and that one must have one’s treasure in the spiritual realm, for one’s heart iswhere one’s treasure is. They still think that riches are nevertheless a blessing from God, and that the rich havecertain advantages for being saved; and now, on this point, Jesus completely overturns the common conceptionof Judaism in His time. Instead of dispelling the disciples’ astonishment, Jesus increases it. Far from concedingthat wealth gives its possessors any ease, He does not hesitate to declare that it constitutes a kind of impossibil-ity. He tells them this under the veil of a parable and with a slight air of paradox, but in terms that cannot be for-gotten. What creature is larger than a camel, and what passage is narrower than the eye of a needle? It is chosendeliberately: the rich man, swollen with his riches, is in the situation, at the entrance of the Kingdom of God, ofa camel you would try to pass through the eye of a needle.The disciples are stunned by this declaration. Under such conditions, who can be saved? Who indeed is not thepossessor of some goods? You place us all in impossibility, they object to Jesus. It is true, He replies: only Godcan overcome this impossibility. He withdraws nothing from the rigour of what He has said. He suggests thatwhat is impossible for man is possible for God, and that they are precisely within this grace: all true disciplesfeel themselves raised by the omnipotence of God to that marvellous detachment; all is possible with the graceof God. In His little flock Jesus recognises the work of God. He gives thanks for these detached souls, thesefree men, whom His Father has given Him. It is as if Jesus were saying: Yes, y...