In St Mark's Gospel, Chapter 10:17-30, someone asks Jesus what he must do to have eternal life. Jesus says: "Go sell what you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come follow me."
That was a bit too much for the man. "His face fell and he went away sorrowful for he was a man of great wealth."
The God and mammon dilemma has been around a long time. It's not an easy one at all.
One of my abiding memories from my schooldays in Dublin's Synge Street of an a general ambivalence about this question. On the one hand we were forever being told that God was on the side of the poor and that all the heroes in the Gospel were poor and ignorant. But when it came to pointing out what a good school Synge Street was, the Brothers would remind us of the rich and famous who had been educated there - heads of civil service departments, Central Bank governors, TV personalities . . . they'd also mention a few priests. What really made Synge Street the great school in those days was its reputation for producing so many captains of industry.
Even as a young boy this baffled me. The Brothers never once mentioned some nonentity when it came to selling the school. So why did they give us the line about Jesus and the poor?
This is not a criticism of the Christian Brothers. After all, they were only pointing out role models. The Brothers themselves lived lives of real poverty and the congregation, especially in its early years, gave total dedication to educating the poor.
But I can never understand the dichotomy that prevails when we talk about the marginalised and yet are forever lifting the cap to the rich and powerful.
In recent years the lid has been blown off cronyism and as a nation we have become quite self-righteous about political golden circles. We even have the nerve to ask how they got away with it, while we ourselves are perpetuating our own particular golden circles.
Last week this newspaper carried a series of articles on the shambolic condition of our health service. We live in a republic where those with private medical insurance are catered for while poorer people are left in queues and on waiting-lists that might well end in the next life. According to the series, the crisis is worsening, despite our current economic success. Our prosperity seems to increase our tendency to honour those who are "successful" - another word for having "loadsa money". Everything is measured in terms of money, wealth and power, yet the Gospel tells us a completely different story. If we keep heading in the current direction, we will cut off whole communities from having a serious input into the making and shaping of our society.
The churches too seem to fall into the trap. They appear to sanctify the marginalised, yet there are very few churchpeople who move outside their own circle when it comes to looking for advice. How often are the marginalised called on to give their opinion? Yes, on occasion they may get a token look in, but that's it.
I'm still puzzled by the ambivalence of the Christians Brothers in Synge Street back in the 1960s. But at least they were ambivalent. Now the ambivalence seems to be gone as we listen to every word of the rich and famous. We seem to be spending all our energies trying to emulate them. In the meantime, what about the Gospel?
M.C.