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Catholic Commentary
The Rich Young Man and the Call to Perfection
16Behold, one came to him and said, “Good teacher, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?”17He said to him, “Why do you call me good? NU reads “Why do you ask me about what is good?” No one is good but one, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”18He said to him, “Which ones?”19‘Honor your father and your mother.’ ’”20The young man said to him, “All these things I have observed from my youth. What do I still lack?”21Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”22But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he was one who had great possessions.
Matthew 19:16–22 recounts a wealthy young man asking Jesus what good deed will earn eternal life, and Jesus responding that while keeping God's commandments is necessary, perfection requires complete renunciation of possessions and personal discipleship. The young man's refusal to abandon his wealth reveals that material security has become his ultimate loyalty, preventing him from following Jesus.
The young man kept the commandments faithfully—and still went away sad, because goodness is not an achievement you earn but a person you follow.
Verse 22 — The Sorrow of the Divided Heart He "went away sad" (apēlthen lypoumenos). The Greek present participle suggests ongoing grief, not a momentary pang. Matthew's phrase "he had great possessions" (ēn echōn ktēmata polla) is clinically precise: the possessions had him as much as he had them. The tragedy is not that he is wicked — he is genuinely good by the standard of the second table — but that his goods have become rivals to God. His sorrow is itself a grace-laden clue: he is not hardened but suspended between two loves, unable as yet to choose the greater.
Catholic tradition identifies this passage as the scriptural foundation for the distinction between precepts and counsels — what the Catechism calls the "two ways" of Christian moral life (CCC 1973–1974). The commandments bind all; the evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity, obedience) are the invitation to "more," the path of perfection to which Jesus calls those he specially loves. This is not a two-tiered salvation but a two-tiered response to the same love.
St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 184) develops this at length: perfection consists formally in charity, and the counsels remove the impedimenta caritatis — the obstacles to perfect love. Wealth is precisely such an obstacle when it becomes an end rather than a means. St. Francis of Assisi's entire vocation began with this text, read aloud at Mass in 1208.
The Second Vatican Council in Lumen Gentium (§39–42) universalized the call to holiness while affirming the counsels as a "more excellent way," and Pope St. John Paul II's Veritatis Splendor (§16–22) devotes its opening meditation entirely to this passage, arguing that the young man's question — "what good must I do?" — is the foundational question of moral theology. John Paul notes that the commandments are not a floor but a school that trains the heart to ask the deeper question: not merely what to do, but who to become, and who to follow.
The Church Fathers saw in the young man's departure a figure of Israel who honored the Law but could not make the leap of faith into the New Covenant. Origen (Commentary on Matthew XV.14) reads the three commands typologically: selling possessions is detachment from the letter of the Law; giving to the poor is sharing wisdom with the spiritually impoverished; following Christ is union with the living Word.
The rich young man is not a villain — he is a conscientious Catholic who goes to Mass, avoids mortal sin, and still senses that something is missing. He is the practicing believer who has done everything asked and yet feels the weight of an unanswered question. His story invites contemporary Catholics to sit with that restlessness rather than suppress it. The specific invitation — "sell what you have and give to the poor" — need not be read as a universal command to literal poverty, but it is a universal command to identify the possession that most rivals God's claim on us: a career, a comfortable lifestyle, a relationship, a reputation. The question Jesus asks of this young man, he asks of every reader: What would make you go away sad? Whatever that thing is, that is likely the precise location of the invitation to perfection. For those discerning religious life or a vocation to radical service, this passage is the foundational call. For all Catholics, it is a regular examination of conscience: Have I placed any created good above the uncreated Good who alone can satisfy the heart?
Commentary
Verse 16 — The Question of the Good The unnamed young man runs to Jesus (Mark 10:17 adds this urgency) and addresses him as "Good Teacher," a greeting unusual in rabbinic culture, where only God was called "good" without qualification. His question — "what good thing shall I do to have eternal life?" — is precisely framed: it is transactional and merit-oriented, asking for a single meritorious act (ti agathon poiēsō). He imagines eternal life as a prize to be won by a discrete deed, not a relationship to be entered.
Verse 17 — Jesus Redirects the Question The NU textual variant — "Why do you ask me about what is good?" — shifts the challenge from Christology to anthropology: stop asking what good act and start asking who is Good. Either reading converges on the same theological point: goodness is not a quality earned by acts but is God's own nature (cf. Ps 100:5). Jesus is not denying his divinity by deflecting the title; he is inviting the man to reflect on the source of goodness itself. He then answers the original question practically: "Keep the commandments." This is the foundational threshold — the moral law is not optional or superseded; it remains the baseline of life in God.
Verses 18–19 — The Decalogue Selection When the young man asks "which ones?" Jesus lists commandments from the second table of the Decalogue (duties to neighbor) and caps them with Leviticus 19:18, the love of neighbor. The absence of the first table (duties to God) is deliberate: Jesus will expose the young man's violation of that very dimension — his attachment to possessions is functionally an idolatry. The structure of Jesus' response echoes the rabbinic concept of a summary of Torah, similar to Hillel's golden rule, but here it becomes a diagnostic tool.
Verse 20 — Sincere Compliance and Deeper Longing The young man's claim — "All these I have observed from my youth" — is not presented sarcastically or ironically by Matthew. Jesus in Mark 10:21 looks at him and loves him, suggesting his claim is genuine. He is morally serious. Yet the question "What do I still lack?" (ti eti hysteromai) reveals a spiritual restlessness that his observance has not satisfied. Augustine's inquietum est cor nostrum (Confessions I.1) resonates here: the heart formed by God cannot rest in the partial. The young man feels the gap but cannot name it.
Verse 21 — The Evangelical Counsel Jesus' response operates on a different register entirely: "If you want to be ()…" The word means complete, whole, fully oriented toward one's — one's final end. This is not a second-class option for spiritual elites but the full flowering of what the commandments point toward. The three commands — sell, give, follow — form an ascending movement: first, divestment of possessions; second, redistribution to the poor (which activates the love-of-neighbor commandment in a radical form); third, personal discipleship. "Come, follow me" () is the same formula used for the Twelve. Jesus is not merely prescribing an ethic but issuing a personal invitation into union with himself. "Treasure in heaven" () directly reverses the young man's earthly treasury — the same Greek root () used in Matthew 6:19–21.