Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive one hundred times, and will inherit eternal life.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 29. Shall receive a hundred-fold. In Saint Mark we read a hundred-fold now in this time, and in the world to come life everlasting. Which hundred-fold is to be understood of the blessings in this life, of interior consolations, of the peace of a good conscience, and in general of spiritual gifts and graces, which are much more valuable than all temporal goods. And besides these spiritual graces in this world, he shall have everlasting glory in the world to come. Witham.—Our Saviour does not here lay down a precept of separating from wives; but, as when he before said, he that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it, he did not counsel, much less command us to lay violent hands upon ourselves; so here he teaches us to prefer the duties of piety to every other consideration. Saint John Chrysostom hom. lxv.—The reward will be a hundred-fold, by the accumulation of spiritual gifts and graces in this life, infinitely superior to all we have left, and the inheritance of life eternal in the next. V.