1st Reading: Amos 6: 1a, 4 – 7;
Second Reading: 1 Timothy 6: 11 – 16;
Gospel: Luke 16: 19 – 31
We live in a world that praises achievement and progress and resists and discards any failure. We exist in a society, which says people ought to deserve everything they are able to work for and acquire. The materially successful are often heard of boasting of their personal achievements. The emphasis is not on what people are but what they can do and on what they can acquire with what they do. God speaks to us in many ways and touches our lives but we often fail to listen to him. He speaks to us in gentle ways and guides us in our weaknesses.
The Gospel of today gives us a quick clue regarding the Kingdom values which are different from all worldly values. It tells us that we as the children of God have the obligation and duty to look after our brothers and sisters and care for them. We all belong to one family of God. The parable illustrates the value of the poor in spirit.
Today’s First Reading taken from the Book of Amos, written during the time of prosperity and denounces the luxurious living of the leaders of Judah and foretells the retribution that was awaiting them. In this reading, we have the last of three woes that the Lord God promised to inflict upon Judah and Israel because of their evil deeds. These nations had rulers who were idle, insensitive to the needs of the poor while they lived in luxury. They failed to recognise their connectedness with others and their responsibility. Accordingly, God said that they would be punished and taken into exile. However, this did not worry these selfish, self-centred egoists. Nor did the warning sent them through the prophet awaken any sense of guilt in their consciences.
The parable in the Gospel of today generally termed as the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus was directed towards the Pharisees. This parable contains the all-important parabolic dynamic of reversal. It begins with the state on earth of the rich person and the poor man and at the end, the reversal of roles. The rich man in the story is nameless but the poor beggar is given the name, Lazarus meaning, the poor of Yahweh as if to reverse the world’s pinion. This nameless rich man had more of this world’s wealth than he could ever use. The description of both a rich man and a poor man is interesting. The rich man is not portrayed as evil or villain and the poor man is not described as particularly virtuous and heroic. The story does not tell us how he got the wealth, perhaps in a proper way through his hard work or he inherited it from his ancestors. He was wealthy. He dressed as a rich man would and had splendid royal living and there was no indication of anything wrong with him. All he did was to enjoy his wealth and his good food, his big house, his fashionable and expensive clothes. Lazarus is presented to us as a person who was not only destitute but also was suffered physically as well. He bore his lot patiently. He was quite content to get the crumbs from the rich man’s table. The reason why dogs were hanging around the table is that when the guests were invited to a feast, they would use bread to wipe their plates or their hands and then toss it under the table. Naturally, this would draw the dogs that would clean up the floor by eating what had been dropped from the table. This was the food that Lazarus longed to have so he could survive. The Gospel of Luke tells us that the poor man was sick and weak. He had sores that the dogs would come and lick. Obviously, the poor man could not afford medication and the rich man refused to acknowledge his presence and his needs. The story goes further to tell us that both the rich man and the poor man died. The poor man was taken to Heaven by angels and the rich man was sent to Hades where he was tormented. Central to the story is the table laden with food. This is both the symbol of the Kingdom and also points to our Eucharistic table, which we dare to approach every day and every Sunday. The rich man made no move whatever to share what he had at the table. He could have done so at either of two levels. First, he could have seen to it that the poor man had enough to eat and he might even have gone further and looked after his physical welfare. This is at the level of “charity”, which most of us feel good about doing. In the second level, neither of the men is seen as rich or poor. They sit down together at the same table and they give and receive and share on a footing of equal dignity the meal and the food. It is quite irrelevant whether one of them is more intelligent, more active, more enterprising, and healthier. Next, we heard that the rich man requesting Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house to warn his five brothers of the plight that awaited them if they continued to live as the rich man did. Abraham answers that his brothers had Moses and the prophets. In other words, they had the laws and the words of the prophets. Equally today, we have the Words of Jesus and the teachings of the Holy Catholic Church that are continuously related to us through the ministers of the Word of God. As the rich man had plenty of opportunities to hear the truth, today, God’s creations, within and without the Church, have all the necessary opportunities to hear the truth. Sending Lazarus back to earth in spirit form is not going to save anyone. We are all rich enough to share our blessings with others. God has blessed each one of us with wealth or health or special talents or social power or political influence or a combination of many blessings. The parable invites us to share what we have been given with others in various ways, instead of using everything exclusively for selfish gains. We need to remember that sharing is the criterion of the Last Judgment: Matthew (25:31ff), tells us that all six questions to be asked of each one of us by Jesus when He comes in glory as our judge are based on how we have shared our blessings from Him (food, drink, home, mercy, and compassion), with our brothers and sisters, anyone in need, in whom he is found. Here is the message given by Pope St. John Paul II in Yankee Stadium, New York during his first visit to the U.S., October 2, 1979. “The parable of the rich man and Lazarus must always be present in our memory; it must form our conscience. Christ demands openness to our brothers and sisters in need – openness from the rich, the affluent, the economically advanced; openness to the poor, the underdeveloped, and the disadvantaged. Christ demands an openness that is more than benign attention, more than token actions or halfhearted efforts that leave the poor as destitute as before or even more so. …We cannot stand idly by, enjoying our own riches and freedom, if, in any place, the Lazarus of the 20th century stands at our doors.”