Heeding God’s Word and Caring for the Lazaruses Who Call Us To Conversion, 2nd Thursday of Lent, March 16, 2017

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sisters of Life Visitation Convent, Manhattan
Thursday of the Second Week of Lent
March 16, 2017
Jer 17:5-10, Ps 1, Lk 16:19-31

To listen to this morning’s homily, please click below:

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• We’ve been talking since the beginning of Lent about how this holy season is supposed to make us more like God: that prayer is meant to help us begin to think as God thinks and to treasure and become more like him whom we adore; that fasting is meant to help us to hunger for what God hungers; that almsgiving is supposed to help us participate in God’s providential care for others. The mercy we show for others is really the fruit of all three practices: the fruit of prayer is charity; what God hungers for is, as we heard on in Isaiah on the third day of Lent, for us to share our bread with the hungry, to shelter the oppressed and the homeless, to clothe the naked when we see them, not to turn our back on our own family members and kin in need, to release those bound unjustly and break the yoke that keeps people oppressed; and almsgiving doesn’t concern simply good deeds done for the poor and needy, but the tree that produces that fruit: The word almsgiving comes from the old English aelmesse, which is derived from the Greek eleemosyna, which is the word for mercy, as in Kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy.” Almsgiving flows from a merciful heart, a heart like God’s.
• It’s not enough for us as Christians simply not to do evil to others. We also are called positively to do good, to sacrifice ourselves for others, to go out in search for those in need, to give not only things to those in greater need but give ourselves. Jesus wants us — and wants to help us — to love one another as he has loved us first, to become Good Samaritans to others just like he crossed the road all the way from heaven to care for us, not just not harming us but positively helping us. Lent is a time for us to examine whether we are in fact bearing fruit from a heart full of compassion. It’s the time for us to beg God for what we asked at the beginning of today’s Mass, to “direct the hearts of your servants to yourself, that, caught up in the fire of your Spirit, we may be found steadfast in faith and effective in works.”
• In the Gospel today, Jesus gives us one of his most powerful parables in which he illustrates to us that it’s not enough just not to harm our neighbor. He wants us to love our neighbor, to give of ourselves for them in need. The Rich Man in the Parable goes to hell not because he did any evil to the poor man, Lazarus, wounded and starving to death at his gate. He didn’t insult him. He didn’t beat him. He didn’t send his dogs to attack him. The Rich Man was sent to hell because when he saw Lazarus at his gate he simply did nothing. He continued to eat his three sumptuous meals a day while Lazarus was dying of starvation and lack of care. Even the pets recognized his suffering such that the dogs were licking his wounds to try to heal them, but the Rich Man had no such compassion.
• The parable illustrates very clearly the Rich Man’s sins of omission and it gets us to ask courageously and sincerely whether we’re committing similar sins. Jesus says that at the end of time, those who with great pain and regret he will wave to his eternal left, will be those who did nothing when they saw people hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill or in prison (Mt 25:31-46). They’ll all be shocked, similar to the way the Rich Man was shocked in the parable today, and will ask, “When did we see you, Lord, hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill or in prison and not minister to your needs?” And Jesus says he’ll respond, “As often as you failed to do it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you failed to do it to me.” The Rich Man’s problem is not that he failed just that he failed to lift a finger to help poor Lazarus at his gate. His deeper problem was that he failed to care for Jesus starving and wounded at his gate.
• That brings us to the second lesson of today’s Lenten readings, which is perhaps even more powerful than the first. Why didn’t the rich man care? Why didn’t he do act when he so easily could have helped? The reason is because his heart was stony, rather than compassionate. The Rich man was stuffing himself with so much food and pleasure that he could no longer empathize. He was basing his existence on his own desires, on his material securities, rather than on God, on his commandments, on love of God and others. In his plaintive appeals to Abraham to have Lazarus at least go to his brothers to warn them of the consequences of their own sinful omissions because of a similarly hedonistic heart-hardening life, it was clear that he knew that they were ignoring the “Moses and the prophets” just as much as he himself had been doing so before.
• The first reading and the Psalm highlight for us the choice that we have to make, the choice that Lazarus got right and the choice that the Rich Man got wrong. It’s between basing our lives on God or on mammon. About the choice God wants us to make, about the fundamental orientation of our life, God tells us through the Prophet Jeremiah in the first reading, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: it fears not the heat when it comes, its leaves stay green. In the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.” This is the fruitful lifestyle of one who, the Psalm adds, “delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on God’s law day and night.” That is the one who prospers eternally in whatever he does, because the chief fruit of his life is interior, in his relationship with God. Because Lazarus always trusted in the Lord, even while his body was decaying, the leaves of his spiritual tree were unfaded; even while he was physically infamished, spiritually he was bearing fruit even during the drought.
• The Rich Man on the other hand was one who, to quote Jeremiah, was “cursed” because he “trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.” He’s described as a barren bush in the desert,” a “lava waste,” a “salt and empty earth.” To use the image of the Psalm, he’s like the “chaff,” the insubstantial remains of something that once was alive but now has had all the life burned out of it, “that the wind drives away.” At death, it was revealed that all his property, his banquets, his wealth were like chaff, whereas Lazarus’ deep roots in the living water of God were revealed as the real strength of his existence and the source of fruit that lasted into eternity.
• All of this brings us to the choice that faces each of us this Lent: Whether we’re going to seek after what the Rich Man sought and place our attention fundamentally on meeting our own needs and wants, or whether we’re going to base our life on God, whether we’re going to meditate on his law day and night, whether we’re going to seek to use all the blessings and gifts he’s given us to build up his kingdom by loving his sons and daughters in need all around us or whether we’re going to use them selfishly to build up our kingdom. It’s not enough for us to wish to do good. God wants us actually to choose to do good and to spend our lives loving others. We will never run out of Lazaruses at our gates, especially here in New York City. There will never be a shortage of Lazaruses at Visitation Mission. We will never exhaust the opportunity to care for Jesus in disguise, including even here in this house. Lent is meant to help Christians  to give alms, pray and fast not just for 40 days but for a lifetime. It’s supposed to bring us back to the basics, and a heart that trusts in God and cares for others is as basic as it gets for Christians.
• Pope Francis wrote his Lenten Message for this year precisely about this passage and what it’s supposed to mean for us. I’d like to highlight a few of his points to help make the lessons Christ teaches us today come alive all the more.
  • The first is that God sends us people as a gift to help us convert and change, to become Good Samaritans, to develop a compassionate heart: “Lazarus teaches us that other persons are a gift. A right relationship with people consists in gratefully recognizing their value. Even the poor person at the door of the rich is not a nuisance, but a summons to conversion and to change. The parable first invites us to open the doors of our heart to others because each person is a gift, whether it be our neighbour or an anonymous pauper. Lent is a favourable season for opening the doors to all those in need and recognizing in them the face of Christ. Each of us meets people like this every day. Each life that we encounter is a gift deserving acceptance, respect and love. The word of God helps us to open our eyes to welcome and love life, especially when it is weak and vulnerable.”
  • The second is about the Rich Man’s heart. Pope Francis says that it was corrupted by love of mammon and that led to vanity, pride and blindness to the needs of others. “The lowest rung of this moral degradation is pride. The rich man dresses like a king and acts like a god, forgetting that he is merely mortal. For those corrupted by love of riches, nothing exists beyond their own ego. Those around them do not come into their line of sight. The result of attachment to money is a sort of blindness. The rich man does not see the poor man who is starving, hurting, lying at his door. Looking at this character, we can understand why the Gospel so bluntly condemns the love of money: ‘No one can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or be attached to the first and despise the second. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money'” (Mt 6:24).
  • The third is about the importance of listening to the Word of God. “The parable goes on to offer a message for all Christians. The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers, who are still alive. But Abraham answers: ‘They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them’ (v. 29). Countering the rich man’s objections, he adds: ‘If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead’ (v. 31). The rich man’s real problem thus comes to the fore. At the root of all his ills was the failure to heed God’s word. As a result, he no longer loved God and grew to despise his neighbour. The word of God is alive and powerful, capable of converting hearts and leading them back to God. When we close our heart to the gift of God’s word, we end up closing our heart to the gift of our brothers and sisters.”
• At the very end of the Gospel today, the Rich Man begs that Lazarus return to his brothers to warn them of the impending doom unless they change and begin to care for those in need, saying that if someone from the dead returns to them they would repent. But Abraham replies that if they don’t believe in Moses and the Prophets, neither would they believe should someone back from the dead bring them this message. Well, we’ve been given the privilege that the brothers of the Rich Man never received. Jesus has in fact come back from the dead to give us this message himself. Here at Mass we encounter him risen, not under the appearance of a poor man but under the even humbler appearances of bread and wine. But it’s truly Jesus. Today he gives us his Body and Blood and tells us, “Do this in memory of me.” This means not just that we celebrate the Mass in his memory but that we, receiving the message he gives us in his own body language, go and do the same, giving our body, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our food, our material resources to others. That is path of life, the path of watered roots and fruitfulness in season and out, the path of love that will bring us to experience eternal joy with him, with Lazarus, and with all the saints. As we prepare to receive him today, let us ask him for the grace to remain in a holy communion always with his self-giving charity so that we, recognizing him here, may recognize him always in the disguise of the poor and love him there as much as we do here!

The readings for today’s Mass were: