Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

It seems somehow fitting that as we enter into the shorter days of autumn, as a chill invades the air and the leaves begin to turn and fall, that we are confronted with the sobering parable of Lazarus and Dives in today’s gospel. Lazarus, the beggar covered with sores; Lazarus, “Eleazar” in Hebrew, whose name means “God is my help,” Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers.  Dives, whose name literally means “Riches,” dressed in purple and dining at Canlis, Dives who pays no attention to the beggar outside his door, a beggar whose only companions are the dogs who lick his sores. This may be the starkest, most troubling of all the parables of Jesus, for more than any other place in the Gospels, it gives us picture of how our choices shape our destiny. It serves as a cautionary tale, a warning, an admonition, and perhaps even an invitation.

Truth to tell, this parable is not the story of Lazarus, about whom we know nothing except that he was poor, sick, and neglected. The fact that he rests in paradise, in the bosom of Abraham, is not meant to say that the all the poor are virtuous, nor does it say that all the rich are doomed. It suggests that as his name suggests, Lazarus did not despair, did not curse God; he hoped in God, in the God he believed was his help, as his very name says. God is my help.

No, this parable is about poor, rich Dives, the man who had everything, Everything but open eyes, and an open heart. Dives walked in and out of his house each day past the human refuse that was Lazarus, and like so many, like most of us, kept walking with his eyes fixed elsewhere. He had everything he needed, and certainly didn’t need the annoyance of a beggar at his door, didn’t need the embarrassment to his guests who had to step over him, didn’t need the disruption Lazarus brought into his tidy world. Dives was pleased with himself and his existence, his wealth, his large family: he had it all. As the first reading from Amos says, he was “complacent.”

Then the story turns, as all the parables of Jesus turn; the tables, literally are turned. After their death, Lazarus finds himself at the celestial banquet with Abraham and the righteous, and Dives languishes in thirsty torment, separated from Lazarus by a gulf far wider than the one that divided them in life.

So the tables are turned, and Dives the rich becomes Dives the beggar, one who cries out for help from the nether world, as Lazarus had done on his doorstep. Without appreciating the irony, he asks Lazarus to save him, to save his brothers from their complacency; I think it’s not too long of a reach to say that he begs Lazarus to save us from our complacency. 

The answer is a stern one: the warnings had already been given, they had the law and the prophets, and even if someone should return from the dead, they might not repent. The complacent, alas, do not need anything beyond their riches.

So where does that leave us?  We too have the law and the prophets, and more, we have the example of the Word of God made Flesh in Christ Jesus, we have the testimony of one who has risen from the dead. So here it is, plainly put: Am I able, am I willing to listen to Him? Am I able to hear and act on his word of mercy, of compassion, of sharing?

The question I need to ask myself again and again is a hard one:  Am I Dives, complacent, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, defined by what I own, not by who I am and what I believe? Am I Dives who ignores the beggar outside the door, and all those other painful realities that might upset my tidy world?

Or am Lazarus, begging with humility for what I need?  Am I humble enough to call myself Lazarus, Eleazar, “God is my help”?

Thomas Lucas, S.J.