Around thirty-two years ago, Saint John Paul II wrote his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor. In the first chapter of the encyclical, Pope John Paul II begins with the dialogue between Jesus and the rich young man in the nineteenth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel. The Pope noted in the Gospel of Matthew, the young man does not have a name. John Paul II wrote," For the young man, the question is not so much about rules to be followed, but about the full meaning of life. This is in fact the aspiration at the heart of every human decision and action, the quiet searching and interior prompting which sets freedom in motion. This question is ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good which attracts us and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from God who is the origin and goal of man's life.”
In the dialogue with the rich young man, Jesus responded to a question, “Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?” His response points to the second table of the Decalogue. The young man claims that he has kept all of these commandments and asks what he still lacks. Jesus then responded to the notion of perfection (if you wish to be perfect) and invited him to sell all of his possessions and give them to the poor. The dialogue has posed many questions that the Church has been dealing with over two millennia, whether Jesus is inviting two tracks of Christian life, one for the ordinary believers, the less perfect life, and a more perfect life for a special group of people. The perfection that Jesus invites the young man is related to the love of one's neighbor. The second precept of the Decalogue deals with behavior toward one's neighbor. So when Jesus invited the young man to sell all of his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, Jesus was not inviting the young man to leave the Decalogue, but to perfect fulfillment of it. Therefore, the invitation to perfection is for every Christian believer, not just a select group of people.