A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.
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Today's gospel (Luke 16: 19-31) is the parable of the rich
man and the poor man. The rich man is given no name in the parable, but I
follow here the tradition of calling him Dives which means ‘rich’ in
Latin. On the surface, this is a simple story in which Jesus points to the
dangers of wealth and the mercy of God on those who suffer. Yet it is also a
kind of anti- ghost story for it denies the possibility of communication
between the living and the dead, at least in this sense: that there are no
missions of mercy that originate in hell. Lazarus, who in this life suffered
constantly poverty and ill health, now finds all his cares relieved. Dives, who
in this life never missed a moment of pleasure and satisfaction, finds himself
in torment. There is also a sting in the tail of this parable, for the lesson
that Abraham gives to Divas is a foretelling of the unbelief of the Pharisees
who, like the family of Dives, will not believe even if someone comes back to
them from the dead.
Our last reflection on Tuesday concerned an uncomfortable
truth about this life, i.e. corrupt religious authority. Our reflection today
concerns an uncomfortable truth about the next life and what used to be called
one of the four last things: death, judgement, heaven, and hell. Why is Dives
in hell? If we read the words of Abraham carelessly, we might imagine that his
punishment and the reward of Lazarus are simply meant to balance the scales
against their fates in this world. Yet this would be a misunderstanding. Dives
did not go to hell because he wore fine linen in this life; Jesus wore a fine
tunic that was woven in one piece. Dives did not go to hell because he ate
sumptuously; so too did Jesus and in the houses of sinners. So, how do we
explain their respective fates?
Lazarus was in the bosom of Abraham, the limbo of the Fathers
until the coming of Christ the Liberator, for the same reason that any human
being escapes the punishment due to sin: simply because he was the beneficiary
of the mercy of God. The parable does not tell us enough about his interior
life, but since the Author of the parable is the one who tells us that what makes
a man good is what comes from his heart, Lazarus’s virtues do not consist in
his having sores and being poverty stricken. Somewhere in his soul, Lazarus
belonged to God, longed for God; and like Job, he turned his heart to God
despite his ill fortune.
In contrast, Dives was in hell for the same reason that any
human being may go there: because he chose creatures over his Creator. But what
do I mean by saying he made this choice? Dives’s crimes should trouble us all,
for they were not crimes of commission but of omission; not so much about the
bad things he did, as about the good things he left undone, the evil that he
allowed by his failure to act.
Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret
faults
as the psalmist prays. Jesus will return to the reality of
this kind of sin in His foretelling of the last judgement when He says:
insomuch as you did not do these things to the least of
my brethren, you did not do them to me.
We cannot see this as a punishment for ignorance, as if God were
to punish those who simply do not think. The punishment goes rather to the root
of that ignorance, for Dives’s ignorance and his inaction arise from a heart
that is turned in on itself. Self-indulgence is only a superficial risk for the
wealthy; the greater risk is the inner wounding that comes from selfishness and
covetousness, the psychological grasping for the safety that our fallen human
nature attributes to our environment and possessions. Nobody speaks today about
the figure of the miser who has become something of a caricature. But there is
a miser who lurks in every one of us. This miser has the desire to build our
safety out of the things of this world and to cling to them tightly, if
unwittingly, in an absurd communion of the damned and the perishable.
But the parable of Dives and Lazarus is not a tragedy, even
if Dives’s damnation is a calamity for him. In the end, like the thieves
crucified either side of Jesus, Dives received his just desserts. There is no
consolation for him from the mouth of Abraham, either from the spiritual
torment evoked by his unbearable thirst, anticipating the physical punishments
of the damned after the Resurrection of the Dead, or the moral torment of his
inability to warn his family about the dangers that awaited them.
We rely on the infinite mercy of God, but it seems that this
infinite mercy is not an unconditional mercy expressed in the bromides of a thousand liberal do-gooders. There is a time given to us, and
then there is a time when there is no more time. There is a day in which we can
act, and then the light is lost, and our account must be paid. There is a
morning when we will rise for the last time, when we may draft a diary that
will have no following chapter, and in which plans laid will not be fulfilled. There
is an hour of our responsibility in which we will be required to give our
response.
Then, on that day, as on the day of the Last Judgment, let
us pray now that we are spared what we may deserve and receive the gift given to
Lazarus.
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