Another reading of The Rich Young Man
Jesus looks far in the words of that young man who desires, as he can guess, the fullness of life. That young man, in his own way, intuits something even in the good master, something greater than just human. In fact only God is good, confirms the Master. And Jesus accompanies that man’s journey with appropriate gradualness. At the beginning he talks to him about the commandments and indeed about the only commandments that he already lives. That is already a beautiful thing, the beginning of a journey and it should not be underestimated.
When the young man seems to want to insist, Jesus suggests that he leave everything and follow him, selling everything for the poor. But the young man is not ready yet. Jesus knows that a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, that is, that one cannot save oneself. What is impossible for men is possible for God. So the impossibility that boy experiences is also a grace. The grace of those who, already open to a path, experience that they cannot travel it on their own strength.
Thus that young man who continues to follow Jesus but from afar we perceive him a few pericopes later in the figure of the blind man who asks Jesus to heal him. The impossibility of acting alone directs that person to ask God for help, the only way of an authentic, gradual, spiritual journey.
Only grace draws man to God gradually orienting to live everything in him. And everyone will be able to experience it on their own personal journey. A father of a family will not ordinarily sell all his goods to give them to the poor but he will live in an increasingly different inner disposition towards those same goods. The Holy Queen Elizabeth of Hungary lived her condition more and more soberly until, when her husband died, she felt her call to live even outwardly in poverty.