OT XXVI [C]: Am 6:1a, 4-7; 1Tm 6:11-16; Lk 16:19-31

The parable that Jesus speaks in today’s gospel reading is a very uncompromising parable, and a somewhat unsettling one for that reason. He told this story to challenge the great gulf that existed in his day between the extremely wealthy and the destitute. This was one of the gulfs that Jesus was passionate about eliminating. The story focuses on two individuals who are physically close but, in reality, inhabit different worlds which never meet, between which stands a great gulf. The parable doesn’t say that Lazarus was a good man because he was poor or that the rich man was a bad man because he was rich. Nothing is said about the moral status of either. However, the parable clearly criticizes the rich man for doing nothing when he could have done something that would have made a huge difference to the situation of the miserable man at his gate. The poor man had a modest longing - to eat the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. The rich man could have satisfied that modest longing without any loss to himself. A little was being asked for, but nothing was done. If the rich man had done the little that the poor man longed for him to do, the great gulf between them would have narrowed ever so slightly. Instead, he allowed the gulf to stand, and in the next life that gulf between them remained - only now it was the rich man whose modest longing for a drop of cold water could not be satisfied.

We can sometimes feel helpless before the enormity of the gulfs that exist between individuals, communities and nations. We feel there is nothing we can possibly do to bridge those gulfs. Yet, the parable in today’s gospel suggests that there is always something we can do to bridge gulfs between people, even if what we do is on a very small scale. If the rich man had satisfied the modest longing of Lazarus, it would not have fundamentally changed the great inequalities between the very rich and the very poor in the society of Jesus. However, it would have been a step in the right direction. One human being’s life would have changed for the better. Certainly, in Jesus’ eyes, that would have been no small thing. There is always something each of us can do to bring the kingdom of God nearer for someone, a gulf we can cross to engage with someone in a way that enhances that person’s well-being. The parable strongly suggests that the individual is all-important. The small acts of kindness for any one person are of great value in God’s eyes. On one occasion, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward’. A cup of water is nothing, at one level, and, yet, Jesus seems to be saying that the giving of it has eternal significance. The small act of kindness done for one person can bring heaven nearer for that person and for us. The parable suggests that the doing of a little, when it is within our power to do it, is infinitely better than doing nothing.

The story is about the rich man’s failure to notice. He must have seen Lazarus almost every day at his gate, but he saw him without noticing him. The gospel suggests that the rich man failed to notice not because he was too busy or in too much of a hurry, but because he was too self-absorbed; he was the servant of his wealth; he was so immersed in his own lifestyle that he had lost the ability to notice the likes of Lazarus at his gate. The gospel reading also suggests that his lifestyle so absorbed him that he had ceased to notice God or God’s call. If he had been attentive to God, he would have recognized that God was calling out to him through the wretched man who sat at his gate. The rich man had five brothers who were somewhat like himself. They, too, were self-absorbed, immersed in their own comfortable world; they too failed to notice what God was saying to them through Moses and the prophets; they too were not hearing God’s call to them through the sufferings of fellow human beings. 

When someone who appears to be in much greater need than I am crosses my path, I may be the really needy one, and that person may be my path to salvation. It is in noticing that person and responding that I become the person the Lord is calling me to be.

 The main theme of this Sunday’s readings is the warning that the selfish and extravagant use of God’s blessings, like wealth, with no share going to the poor and the needy, is a serious sin deserving eternal punishment. According to Pope Benedict XVI, today’s parable reminds us that while we are in this world, we should listen to the Lord who speaks through the Sacred Scriptures and live according to his will, for after death it will be too late to repent. Wealth without active mercy for the poor is great wickedness. We are all rich enough to share our blessings with others. God has blessed each one of us with wealth, health, special talents, social power, political influence or a combination of many blessings. May the good Lord inspire us to share with others what we have been given, in various ways, instead of using everything exclusively for selfish gains.