Dear Friends.

The Gospel we read today is quite tricky. Not for obvious reasons though. The first time I read it, I thought that this Gospel is clearly about the divide between the rich and the poor. And yes, it predicts a harrowing scenario of what actually happens in our world. The poor are quite often invisible to the rich, and yet the rich are always obvious to the poor.

How many times have you looked down on someone because they weren’t as good, or as successful as you? We all do it. In the case of Lazarus, it happened as he lay unnoticed at the gate of the rich man. The juxtaposition between rich and poor is obvious here, since the rich man “feasted sumptuously every day”, and yet Lazarus “longed to satisfy his hunger”. We might say that both received their just rewards. Lazarus went to heaven and there he is comforted. Whereas the rich man had his good times on earth, and yet he is in the other place, here called Hades.

And so, it is here I pose the question. Which one are you? Are you satisfied in your life? Or, are you hungry? Think carefully about that. Do you feel an emptiness within you? You might think that you are like the rich man, affluent and content, but at the end of the day, do you sense something is missing? Do you wander in a “kind of” hades? And yet the poor man, having longed to satisfy his hunger is satisfied. How did this happen? It may appear to us from the outside that the poor man is really as destitute as he sounds, but who is he to you?

Today’s Gospel also tells us another story. It tells us a little something about Jesus. Now, Jesus was excellent in telling his disciples, and others, stories about life, and sometimes about what lay ahead of him, in ways that left them thinking. These are called parables. This Gospel, though quite terrifying in one sense, is reassuring in the other. In this case, Jesus is Lazarus. Despised and rejected by the world, and yet, He is right outside our gates, waiting for us. What is quite poignant is the rich man’s final plea, in which he names Lazarus and requests that he go and inform his brothers. Never before in this particular Gospel passage did we hear of any recognition of Lazarus by the rich man. But when he is down on his luck, he can finally see the one he rejected. Abraham responds that Moses and the prophets have already warned them. It is now that we can see the mirror between this passage and that of the death and resurrection of Jesus when Abraham says “if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

So dear friends,                                                                                                                               I leave you with this thought for the day,                                                                                    Which one are you?                                                                                                                            God bless,                                                                                                                                   Sarah.

‘An idol called money’ (Pope Francis):

A friend of mine has a saying – ‘Greed grows on the heart like lard on a pig.’ And as greed gets worse, it affects our eyesight! We cannot see people, – we see only whatever food, money, luxuries that our hearts are lusting for. We become blind  to the common good. Greedy systems, and the wizards hiding behind them, want to rob us of dignity, humanity, and solidarity.

And so, in this parable today (Luke 16:19-31), we meet Rich Man Poor Man, coming face to face. Verse 14 (not included in today’s reading) tells us: ‘The Pharisees, who loved money, heard (his teachings) and jeered at him’. Jesus faces them down. Enter the Rich Man and the Poor Man. Lazarus, the poor man, ends up being ‘carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham’. The rich man (sometimes called ‘Dives’, the Latin word for a rich man) ‘died and was buried’. Caput. There follows, through the parable, an intriguing dialogue between ‘Father Abraham’ (as the rich man called him) and ‘My son’. (as Abraham replies). Obviously the Rich man was a regular in attending Saturday Synagogue. But the words of Moses and the Prophets could never cut through the lard, the greed grown around his heart. There was a chasm between the wealthy society and that of the poor. Still is!

Pope Francis dons a yellow hat in Cagliari, Sardinia.

The yellow helmet was emblazoned with the ‘Welcome to Sardinia, Holiness’.   In this past week, Pope Francis visited Cagliari on this island off the coast of Italy. Here, youth unemployment stands at 50 per cent, and general unemployment is almost 20 per cent.  Francis has made reaching out to the poor and most marginal the priority of his pontificate. Seeing the crowd of 20,000 or more, many chanting ‘Work! Work! Work!’ , Francis left aside his prepared remarks and spoke off the cuff . Using strong words, he denounced what he called big business’s idolatry of money over man.Unemployment “is the consequence of a world that has at its center an idol which is called money ,” while God has willed that “the centre of the world is not an idol, but a man and a woman” with their work.

Read the parable again, where the dogs are licking the ulcers on the legs of Lazarus, while the rich man feasts sumptuously. Then, if you wish,  read the following, from this past week,- an extract from Asia News about Pope Francis’ visit and his strong language: Click here.

And what about where the society in which each of us lives? What has Abraham to say to us? Where are we, in this great divide? Who are we, in this parable? Which side of the chasm? We can change before we die. The lard is never too deep for change.

Fr. Seamus Devitt C.Ss.R.   seamus.devittcssr@gmail.com