Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. We come across in today’s Gospel reading (which is a continuation of the passage we read yesterday) a statement made by Jesus which has come to be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Always taken out of its context, we always tend to hear in this statement either a condemnation of the wealthy by Jesus, or Jesus voicing his disdain for riches. We tend to hear in the statement Jesus talking about the  impossibility rather than the  hardness of the rich entering the kingdom of heaven. We tend to do so because we make a connection between this statement and the one that follows it: the  possibility of a camel passing through the eye of a needle (which is a complete impossibility). It is important to always keep in mind that Jesus was speaking in the heat of the moment (the rich young man walking away sad at the prospect of sharing what he has with the poor). 
Jesus never condemned the rich. He never condemned wealth. Riches are from God. When Jesus made the remark, he was visibly upset. He was upset, not at the young man per se, but at what riches had made out of him. His wealth had made him blind to the values that formed the very basis of his community. He had let his wealth take the place of the  other in his life. 
The human person is created to be in relationship with the other, that is, with God and with his fellow creatures. Everything that he/she is given, is for the enhancement of this relationship. Anything that comes between the human person and the  other is harmful. When Jesus suggested, at the request of the young man (what must I do?), that he go ahead and share what he possessed with the poor, he was simply reminding the young man of the presence of the  other in his life . Jesus was simply telling him that the only way to be assured of eternal life is to take care of the capacity for the other: a capacity that he was created with. The eternal life that he wished to inherit required him to  be rather than to  do. This is what Jesus was recommending for him. To inherit eternal life, he had to go beyond  keeping the commandments in order to  live them.