Brief synopsis of the readings: We begin by reading from the Old Testament Book of Wisdom (yes, again, a book that Catholics recognize but Jews and Protestants don’t). The writer speaks in the first person and asks for the spirit of Wisdom and finds Wisdom more precious than health or wealth, beauty or popularity. The writer insists that Wisdom possesses a radiance that never sleeps. Mark’s Gospel recounts the story of a man who asked Jesus how he can inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to follow the 10 Commandments and the man insisted that he has done that all his life. Jesus then told him to sell everything he owns, give the money to the poor, and follow him. The man, crestfallen, walked away because he was wealthy. Jesus then announces that it is hard to enter 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 the Kingdom of God. Astonished, his disciples asked how anyone could be saved. Jesus tells them that, left to their own devices, nobody can be saved. Only God, for whom all things are possible, can save.

We Christians have spent the last 2,000 years asking the same question: if there is a moment of judgment at the end of my life how will it go for me? Will I be rewarded and spend the rest of eternity in unimaginable joy or will I be condemned to unimaginable suffering? How can I make sure God will approve of me and invite me to Heaven? How can I make sure God won’t condemn me to an eternity of suffering and pain at the hands of Satan?

Scripture gives us several, sometimes mutually exclusive answers. Some feel a belief in Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior is enough. Others point to the twenty fifth chapter of Matthew where we have to feed the poor, welcome the stranger, etc. Here Jesus tells the wealthy young man to do something none of us have done: sell everything, give the money away, and follow Jesus. For all of you (us) who are building up money for retirement, I’m point my admittedly hypocritical finger.

When I was in college my friend Jim Laney (who isn’t Catholic) recommended the book The Last Catholic in America by John Powers. The book is hilarious, but you’d probably have to have been raised Catholic before 1970 to fully appreciate it. Eddie Ryan narrates this tale of growing up in Catholic Chicago in the 1950s. The genius of the book lies in the insane reality many of us grew up with: even as children we were going to be judged on our actions, no matter how juvenile or silly. Even as children we could commit a mortal sin if we died right after committing it were toast. My favorite passage comes from Chapter 4 where the pastor, Fr. O’Reilly speaks:

Saw Ed Connery at this mass last Sunday morning. He was sitting in the third pew right over there. He was on time for mass, paid attention. Went to Holy Communion. Then he went home and had breakfast with his wife and six kids. Decided to go into the living room and watch a little television. Ed Connery turned the set on and went to sit in his easy chair. He was dead before he got there. We buried Ed on Tuesday morning. Ed was sitting here with us last Sunday morning, a healthy man, younger than most of you. Had a beautiful family, except for the second youngest, who did poorly in school, had a good job, nice home, yet God decided that Ed Connery’s time had come. Maybe we’ll be burying You next Tuesday. Are you ready to die this very instant? Were you on time for mass this morning? Have you been paying attention every moment to what has been going on up at this altar? Have you been keeping God’s laws? Have you been saying your morning and evening prayers? Have you been taking care of you family? Have you been going to Confession every week? Have you have you have you? Sometimes you just can’t get a man to come to church and when you finally do, it takes six men to get him through the door. We’re all going to die, you know. And in a very short time. We live sixty, seventy, eighty years at the most. It’s not a very long time. Ask someone who’s old. He’ll tell you. It just didn’t seem to take him that long to get old. This life is just a testing period. A time for God to see if we deserve to spend eternity with Him, to be forever in the presence His beatific vision, to be with Him forever in the happiness of Heaven or to be damned for eternity in the everlasting fires of Hell.

I have to confess I believed in the doctrine of an all loving God, but I can’t tell you how many of my Catholic peers honestly heard this kind of sermon and believed this. For them, this passage from Mark leaves them in stark terror. For them the call to discipleship and salvation is just too high.

I was recently reminded of this through one of my hospice patients, who’ll I’ll call Helen. Helen was raised Catholic in the 1940s and stopped going to church in the 1960s. When I met her a few months ago she wanted to talk about St. Maria Goretti and I honestly didn’t fully understand why.

St. Maria Goretti (1890-1902) was born to a poor family in Italy. When she was eleven a young man attempted to rape her: she fought him off to the point where he stabbed her to death. Her decision to choose death over losing her virginity caused her to be revered and she was made a saint of the Catholic Church in 1950.

Nearly all Catholics read this story and saw Maria as a martyr, someone who died for her faith. But Helen saw it differently. Anyone, but particularly women and children, recognize the horrifying possibility of sexual assault. Nobody wants to think about what he or she would do in this situation, but Helen gleened only one thing from Maria Goretti’s story: if you are being raped, you are expected to sacrifice your life to preserve your virginity.

Simply put, Helen felt that if she were in Maria Goretti’s situation she would not have the strength to resist to the point of death. She, in the last chapter of her life, feared that her life would not be “good enough” to be saved. She approached her own death with fear and panic because too much was asked of her.

When she told me her story I was filled with compassion and empathy. I was grateful that she never faced the horrific choice that faced the eleven year old Maria Goretti. And I explained that God’s love encompasses a judgment that eludes us. I told her that the totality of Christian theology sees God as bursting with love for us, who would never condemn us for fearing we don’t stack up. I recounted Fr. O’Reilly’s sermon and asked if she truly believed any of us would be condemned to eternal suffering for missing mass or omitting morning prayers.

I recounted a quotation that may or may not have come from Mother Theresa but is wonderful regardless of its origin: Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.

In the course of our lives none of us will likely be called to public heroism. We won’t storm the beaches of Normandy or disarm a mass murderer. We won’t run into a building on fire to rescue a senior citizen and we won’t save a child in a plane crash.

But all of us will have the ability to do small things with great love and I believe this is where these readings call us. When we choose Wisdom we don’t choose fame or adulation. We don’t choose to be the person on the evening news who professes false modesty by claiming we aren’t really a hero. I take nothing away from them, but public adulation is not what Jesus calls us to.

I think Jesus calls us to advance karma. I know, I know, karma is not a word that most Christians identify with. We think of karma as some Buddhist or Hindu term that means we might return in the next life as a cockroach or mosquito (or a Nobel Peace Prize winner). We see it as some form of divine justice for sins we commit here.

But I think karma can expand our view of Jesus’ message. If karma determines our eternal future, why can’t it determine our future here? What if karma means this: Every act of kindness or generosity or love allows us to live in a world that is just a little bit kinder or generous or loving? Let’s face it: we have all had experiences where someone has been unduly kind or generous or loving. And when we’ve had that experience it’s made our next action to be kind or generous or loving a little bit easier.

Conversely, every act of selfishness or anger or hate condemns us to a world that is a little bit worse. Conversely those actions have made our next actions to be selfish or angry or hateful easier to justify.

I remember a friend who caught a taxi at the airport to return home. In the course of his ride he asked the cabbie where he was from. The cabbie replied that he was from Ethiopia and was grateful to have found his way to the United States where he could make a better life for himself and his family. My friend was moved by his story and gave a generous tip with these words: “You came here to make a better life for you and your children. My grandfather did the same thing. I’m investing in you because I think my grandfather in Heaven is looking down on both of us and smiling.” My friend told me that his greatest hope is that the cabbie’s grandchild, in his wealth, will do the same thing to someone who is making a better life for someone else. I couldn’t agree more.

So what are we called to do? Maybe these readings call us to generosity. Maybe they call us to tip generously to the service staff we meet on a regular basis. Maybe they call us to be generous in other ways.

Many of us are not allowed to give blood, but not all of us. I recognize the aversion to needles and anemia, but a blood donation requires most of us no more than 30 minutes and a band aid (and donuts). Can we do that?

Maybe it’s something even simpler. The next time we’re in a grocery store or other public place and see a toddler having a meltdown, can we sidle up to the parent and give him or her a word of encouragement? “Isn’t it amazing how fast the wheels can come off?” “How do they know when we don’t have time for this?”

When we think about issues as large as salvation it’s easy to “think big” and expect that much is asked of us. In reality, much is asked of us. But if we pray for wisdom instead of fame, if we look at the individual moments where we can make a small difference, perhaps they add up. God asks a great deal of us, but if we do some small thing each day to make the world a little kinder, and we do it over the course of our entire life, does that add up to greatness? I think it does.