What does it mean to "forsake" something — not physically, but psychologically? These reflections explore the ancient scriptural promise of receiving "a hundredfold" not as a reward for renunciation, but as a description of what happens when the inner orientation of a human being undergoes a fundamental reversal. This is a meditation for anyone who has suspected that the economics of the inner life operate by laws entirely different from those governing the outer world.
First reading
Proverbs 2:1-9
My son, if you will receive my words, and hide my commandments with you;
So that you incline your ear unto wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;
Yea, if you criest after knowledge, and lift up your voice for understanding;
If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hid treasures;
Then shall you understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD gives wisdom: out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
He lays up sound wisdom for the righteous:
he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly.
He keeps the paths of judgment, and preservs the way of his saints.
Then shall you understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity;
yea, every good path.
Gospel
Matthew 19:27-29
Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed you; what shall we have therefore?
And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That you which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.
— Interpretation —
On this day, the fifteenth Friday in Ordinary Time, the readings place before us two passages that, on the surface, seem to speak of effort and reward — of seeking and finding, of giving up and receiving back. The reading from Proverbs tells us to seek wisdom “as silver” and to search for understanding “as for hid treasures.” The Gospel has Peter asking his extraordinarily blunt question: “We have forsaken all, and followed you; what shall we have therefore?” And Christ’s answer is staggering — a hundredfold, and everlasting life.
Let us stay with this for a moment. What is a hundredfold? If we think literally, it is absurd. A man leaves one house and receives a hundred houses. He leaves one field and receives a hundred fields. The literal mind, hearing this, either inflates it into a prosperity gospel or deflates it into metaphor meaning “a lot.” But neither approach touches what is being said here.
Let us begin with the passage from Proverbs, because it contains the key. “If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hid treasures — then shall you understand.” Notice the structure. The understanding does not come first. The seeking comes first. And it is not casual seeking. The image is of a man searching for buried treasure — that is, something he cannot see, something hidden beneath the visible surface, something he believes in before he finds it. This is not the seeking of a man who already knows where things are. It is the seeking of a man who has begun to suspect that the visible world is not the whole of reality.
Now, what is this hidden treasure? In the inner sense, it is meaning itself — a higher order of meaning that lies concealed within everything, within every experience, within every encounter, within Scripture itself. The natural man — what we might call the first man, the man who has not yet begun to awaken — sees only surfaces. He reads the parable and sees a story. He reads “forsake houses and brethren” and thinks it means abandoning one’s family. He hears “a hundredfold” and thinks of multiplication in the ordinary sense.
But consider what happens when a man begins to understand something at a new level. I do not mean intellectually, as a clever reinterpretation. I mean when something opens in him — when a passage he has read a hundred times suddenly speaks to his actual situation, to his inner state, to the very quality of his being in that moment. Does the passage change? No. But his relationship to it changes utterly. And what was one thing becomes, as it were, a hundred things. It multiplies. It feeds him in ways he could not have anticipated. This is the hundredfold.
Now let us look at what must be forsaken. Christ says: houses, brethren, sisters, father, mother, wife, children, lands. Read literally, this is a demand for total external renunciation. But in the language of inner meaning, these represent something else. They represent all the established identifications from which a man derives his sense of who he is. “Houses” — the structures of thought he lives in, his habitual mental frameworks. “Father and mother” — the inherited attitudes, the psychological inheritance that shaped him before he could think for himself. “Brethren and sisters” — the horizontal identifications, the tribal loyalties that tell him what to believe and whom to agree with. “Lands” — his territory, his position, what he regards as his own ground.
To forsake these does not mean to hate them. It means to cease drawing one’s sense of being from them. It means to stop being defined by them. And this is the most difficult thing in the world, because a man does not know who he is apart from these things. To let go of them, even inwardly, feels like death. It is a kind of death — the death of the first man so that the new man can begin to grow.
And what comes in return? Christ uses a peculiar word that is often passed over: “in the regeneration.” The Greek is palingenesia — literally, a new birth, a being-born-again. He does not say “in the future” or “in heaven.” He says “in the regeneration.” That is, when this new birth begins to take place in you, when you begin to live from a different center, then the twelve thrones — which represent the fullness of ordered inner life, the complete governance of oneself — become accessible.
Peter’s question was mechanical. He asked it from the level of the first man: I gave something up, what do I get? But Christ’s answer transcends the question entirely. He does not answer from the same level. He speaks from the level where giving up and receiving are the same act — where the treasure, once found, reveals that it was never elsewhere.
It was always hidden in the field where you already stood.
Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash
Scripture: King James Version
