REFLECTIONS

The Foolish Monkey

Fr. Johnny Go S.J., School Director
15 October 2006
Mary the Queen Parish

Posted Monday, 16-Oct-2006 7:10 AM

     Once there were two monkeys who were friends.  Let’s call them King and Kong.  Like all apes, they love swinging on tree branches.  They also love to eat.  In fact, they have two favorite fruits.  As we can guess, they love nothing more than bananas.  But very few people know this:  They also love oranges, especially because oranges smell so good and are so much harder to find. 

     Anyway, one day as Kong was enjoying a banana, something heavy hit King on the head.  When they looked, they saw that it was a couple of coconuts.  But there was something strange about them.  They were not ordinary coconuts:  One of them had a hole, and had that irresistible smell of oranges.  

     King and Kong could not believe their good fortune since they realized that there was an orange inside one of the coconuts.  If only they could take the orange out, they could now enjoy eating that delicious and rare fruit.  

     Little did King and Kong know that this was actually an old but clever trick used by African hunters to trap monkeys by putting an orange inside a coconut.  They would slice a coconut in two, hollow it out, and in one half of the shell cut a hole just big enough for a monkey’s hand to pass through. Then they would place an orange in the other coconut half before fastening together the two halves of the coconut shell.  It was an effective way of trapping monkeys who could not resist oranges.

     This was exactly what happened to Kong.  He smelled the delicious orange, and detecting it inside the coconut, eagerly and unsuspectingly inserted his hand into the hole, felt the orange inside, grasped it, and tried his best to pull it out.  Since the hole was too small for the orange, Kong’s hand was stuck inside and no matter how hard he tried, and no matter how hard King cheered him, he couldn’t take the orange out!

     From the corner of his eyes, King saw the approaching hunters.  He started shouting and begging Kong to let go of the orange and escape with him, but Kong wanted the orange so badly that he refused to let go and kept pulling and pulling.   To save his own life, his friend King had to give up and leave him there still stubbornly grasping the orange.

     Soon the hunters quickly surrounded the helpless and foolish monkey and captured it.

     Kong had not realized that as long as he kept his fist wrapped around the orange, he was trapped. The only way he could save his own life was to let go of the orange and flee. But this Kong could not and would not do.  Instead he prayed:  “Lord, save me from danger.  Only do not let me give up the orange!”  But it was too late.

     King cried as he saw his friend taken away, but he learned a very important lesson that day:  “It’s dangerous to like oranges that much!”

     I decided to share this story with you because our Gospel today talks about the rich young man who would not or could not let go of his riches.  He is like Kong, the monkey who got into trouble because he would not or could not let go of his orange.  In the Gospel, our Lord invited him to give up his riches in order to have eternal life.  But the rich young man failed to do so. His prayer was probably like the monkey’s prayer:  “Lord, give me eternal life. Only do not ask me to give up my riches.”

     Don’t get our Lord wrong.  He’s not saying that riches in themselves are evil just as oranges in themselves are not bad.  In fact, they can be very good, and can serve a very good purpose in our lives and in the lives of others.  However, like the orange in the story of the foolish monkey, riches and when you think about it, many other things in this world can be very dangerous when we become too attached to them.  It’s a very old and clever trap that we should all watch out for.

     This evening, Iet us examine our lives and ourselves, and ask ourselves this question:  “What is my orange?  What is my trap?”  What is that one thing or that one person that I may have allowed myselfto become too attached to?   What, among the many different things and persons in my life, has become such a strong attachment in my life that it has begun to stand in the way between myself and God, between myself and eternal life?  Perhaps there is one thing in my life that I don’t want God to touch, that I don’t want Him to ask me to give up, for which I, like the rich young man in the Gospel and the foolish monkey in the story, pray:  “Lord, save me from danger.  Give me eternal life. Only do not ask me to give this one thing up…”

     We must name our orange.  We must identify our trap. And we must practice letting go so that when the time comes, we will be able to let go.  Remember the story of the foolish monkey:  For as long as we keep our fist wrapped around our orange—whatever it may be, be it riches, honor, or relationships—we will end up trapped in our own attachment and greed, and will end up walking away helplessly from eternal life.  Let us pray that God will save us from our attachments.

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