A traditional list of immediate "basic needs" is usually listed as food, water, shelter and clothing.  But many modern also emphasize the minimum level of consumption of 'basic needs' to include sanitation, education and health care.  And still a few others include protection from environmental threats and love.  In today’s Gospel, a young man eagerly runs up to Jesus.  He asks a question that perhaps we have asked ourselves, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”   Life is full of critical questions.  If you are hungry, the critical question is, “Where can I find something to eat?”  If you are homeless, the critical question is, “Where can I sleep tonight?”  If you are being abused, the critical question is, “Where can I go to be safe?”  The impression one can glean from the young man is that these basic needs have been met.  His question seems deeper and more intense in searching to find what is the really life-giving.  If we are fortunate enough to have our basic needs met, the questions change.  The questions turn from safety and security to love and meaning.  We begin to ask these questions: How can I love and be loved?  How can I find meaning and purpose in life?  How can I be happy?  So the young man in this story is looking for life at its deepest meaning and level.  He wants to live, not merely survive.  He is hungry for meaning, longing for purpose, determined to make the most of what he’s got.  He already has it made; now he wants to matter; he wants his life to have meaning.  So he comes to Jesus asking “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Somebody said that there is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it hardly behooves the rest of us to pass much judgment on any of us.  Assessing the young man, he seemed to have everything most people want out of life.  He was young, apparently rich, he had power, he was righteous; he seemed to have lived a moral life.  What else could there be?  Jesus offers him the response we heard in the Gospel.  And the young man responds, “All of these I have observed from my youth.”  If this be true, the young man would be an asset to any community, a welcomed member of any church.  He is the kind of guy you would like to have as a friend.  But there is still something amiss in his life.  The young man senses it, intuits it, and feels it.  The response from Jesus indicates there is a hindrance in the young man’s life that is keeping him from a deeper life.  And when Jesus tells him what it is, he went away sad.  The critical questions are: Where is the life you have lost in living?  Are you drowning in things but thirsty for meaning?  Are you making a life or making a living?  These are critical questions, crucial questions, and the kind of things we need to ask ourselves.  What blocks us from living life fully and authentically as a Catholic Christian?  Is it less what we need to do or obtain and more of what we need to let go of to be real and genuine in living life with happiness, with humility and with faith?                                                               

Msgr. Mike