In our Gospel for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Jesus tells the parable about a rich man who learned to comfortably ignore Lazarus the beggar who longed to eat even of the scraps that fell from his table. The oblivious attitude of the rich man toward Lazarus is not that far off from the attitudes that many of us have toward the poor. We would rather not see them and have them relegated to the further fringes of society. Clearly, Jesus asks us to reflect on the poor man which is why he has a name. All too often we don’t know the names of the outcasts. When you see someone in the same place every day for an extended period of time you learn your own way of identifying them.
By placing a name on the poor man Jesus reminds us of the need to humanize those whom we might otherwise ignore. He attracts our attention.
We have been trained to think solely in terms of the economically poor when we use the term “poor” or “poverty.” Some have expanded this sense to think of the spiritually poor. This is especially important when considering Matthew’s Gospel. Luke, however, draws the lines between rich and poor.
The poor are indeed always among us. While many of them are economically disadvantaged, and there are those who are “spiritually poor” there are many other forms of poverty that we encounter each day. Many people long for friendship, love or even just a little attention. In our concrete world there are many who are lost entirely in the crowds on the streets, but even more so in the office, the classroom, the cafeteria. Those among us who are emotionally vulnerable, but otherwise seem successful, are the most invisible poor. They have names, often a place within society; they might even seem to be “happy.” Yet they are genuinely poor – bereft of the human contact and experience of intimacy that human persons require.
There is a poverty of love and caring that has swept through our society leaving a behind a wake of depression, addiction and utter desperation. This form of poverty is very easy to miss. We fail to see it because it is invisible. They don’t look any different, they may not even act any different, but they are hungry every day, sometimes every moment of their day. Our attention is often drawn to them when it is too late, and even when there is no longer any possibility of making a difference in their lives.
We are challenged to be men and women present to the poorest among us. It isn’t always easy. In some ways our own prejudices can get in the way preventing us from genuinely encountering the poor. It can be ever so easy to reject the downtrodden or to pile on when the crowd turns against someone. Because they are so easy to miss, or we dismiss them because we don’t understand their pain, we ignore them entirely. Unlike the homeless we encounter on the streets or on the subway, they don’t hold signs calling for our compassion. Their pain and poverty is a deafening silence.
The Lord offers us a tremendous challenge, one that is not always easy to take. We are called to look everyone in the eye and to meet them in our common humanity and allow them the grace and dignity that they are due as children of God. Lazarus comes to us in many forms each day of our lives, as disciples of Jesus we are called to give more than the scraps from our tables, but to be men and women of authentic compassion meeting everyone along the journey of life.
Oct. 2 – Faith is a gift to be shared
“Lord, increase our faith.” At first glance this seems like a noble and worthwhile plea. But, given all that we have seen of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, should it be a surprise that he turns even this request around?
This request by the disciples is one which many of us still struggle with today. It is as though faith were a quantifiable commodity, one that we could determine exactly how much we have relative to how much we desire.
During times of distress and crisis we hear comments like, “I don’t know if I have enough faith to get through this” or “It really tested her faith” or “I wish I had as much faith as he does.”
Jesus takes us to a strong visual image – “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed” you could do great things. A mustard seed is a small almost colorless seed which is easily overlooked. It was true at that time that the mustard bush was the biggest bush that grew in the area around Jerusalem. The imagery, then, offers clear contrasts for the listeners to grasp.
Jesus’ remarks, though, focus our attention on the folly of the question and the futility of the perceived struggle that we have with the amount of faith we have.
Faith simply is a gift. We either have it or we don’t. Sure, we can wrestle with faith. We try to live out the demands of our faith. While we might envy the faith of others, we cannot simply define our experiences in life by either comparing our situation with others through some psychological theory about why we respond in certain ways. Psychologists who have attempted to define and faith and discuss the cognitive abilities and stages of faith-filled people have only provided some anecdotal conclusions.
Jesus treats the question of faith as he does the experiences of wealth and power – less is better than more. We can see why Jesus takes that attitude regarding wealth and power, but why faith? Should faith not be something that we would want to have in abundance? For essentially the same reasons that Jesus decries wealth and power, he also safeguards us against “too much” faith. An excess of each of these can lead to hubris and a sense that we are in this on our own. We have the inclination towards total self-sufficiency and to losing our sense of reliance upon God. We can use faith, wealth and power to subdue and mistreat other people, it can become a matter of our personal egos being inflated and it causes those who perceive that they are lacking to become jealous and fall into the sin of covetousness.
Faith, like all gifts from God, is given to us freely to benefit, not ourselves, but the whole people of God. As such, we take the faith that we have and live it to the fullest.
The point that Jesus makes is clear – it is not the “amount” of faith that we have that is important – even the person whose faith is little can do miraculous deeds, IF he or she is living out the faith that he or she has.
A difficulty that the modern reader has with this story is that we have never seen any mountains being cast into the sea through the power of a person’s faith. In the secular commentaries surrounding the canonization of the now St. Teresa of Kolkata there was much talk of the miracles attributed to her intercession. Much of the conversation elicited more doubt than faith. We don’t believe in miracles.
When we see people of faith, we tend to marginalize them and treat them as either fanatics or as superstitious.
While it is our obligation to pray for the gift of faith, both for ourselves and for others, we cannot allow that faith to become an object of hubris, jealousy or contention. Instead, we exercise the faith that we have, living it to the greatest potential possible, and in that way, we indeed do move the mountains of skepticism, hatred, and lack of justice and peace that pollutes our world.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.