Mark 10:25 — Community Reflections

MARK 10:25 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God — the camel through the eye of a needle is the most extravagant impossibility image in the Gospels. Various interpretive attempts to soften it (a gate called the Needle's Eye, ropes instead of camels) lack historical support. The point is the genuine impossibility — and verse 27 will clarify: with God, the impossible is possible. The image is not a counsel of despair but the establishment of the problem that only divine action can solve.

Church Fathers on Mark 10:25

A certain man had heard from the Lord that only they who are willing to be like little children are worthy to enter into the kingdom of heaven, and therefore he desires to have explained to him, not in parables, but openly, by the merits of what works a man may attain everlasting life.
Bede · 8th century

I wonder at this young man, who when all others come to Christ to be healed of their infirmities, begs of Him the possession of everlasting life, notwithstanding his love of money, the malignant passion which afterwards caused his sorrow.
Theophylact · 11th century

For in that He loved, or kissed him [ed. note: osculaius, interpretation in Ed. Ben. (?)], He appears to affirm the truth of his profession, in saying that he had fulfilled all those things; for on applying His mind to him, He saw that the man answered with a good conscience.
Origen · 3rd century · in Evan. tom. xv, 14

Read all 15 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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