767 ELM STREET * ROCKY HILL * CONNECTICUT 06067
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767 ELM STREET * ROCKY HILL * CONNECTICUT 06067 |
           
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In was a beautiful spring day and my future wife and some of our friends were off to New York City for the day. On the bus we talked about what we would like to do that day when we arrived in the city. We choose to go the top of the RCA building to see New York from its observation floor. As I was about to leave to go to the elevator to take us down I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman looking over the railing of the observation deck and then I saw her put her leg over the rail. At first, I was too stunned to think and then in a moment I realized this woman was going to jump. Right at the same time a security guard and I grabbed the women and brought her back. Later that day, I was walking down one of the streets and I spotted a man by the side of the road across the street literally lying in the gutter and eating a piece of chicken he found from the waste basket outside a restaurant. Just then a large black stretch Limousine pulled around the corner driving a few feet past the man, stopped and people got out and went into the restaurant no even looking at the man right in front of them. How often are such people like the woman of the RCA building and this man do we choose not to see? The parable of Lazarus and the rich man is one of the more memorable parables of the New Testament. Its stark imagery and story line raise the issue of salvation and damnation. Salvation and damnation are not to be understood only as possibilities of post-mortal life. They also describe the experience in this world. One religious writer put it this way, “A concept of salvation that does not include the concrete experience of human beings in this world is a salvation for angels, not for human beings”. The rich man suffers damnation because he already had accepted it as his destiny by ignoring Lazarus! He not only ignored him, he chose not to see him! That was his great sin; that is why he suffers in his hellish post-mortal existence, because he failed to see his responsibility to extend to a suffering person a helping hand, an expression of God’s love for that man. That is what hell is. Hell is the absence of love. We can experience some of that here on earth in others, ourselves, and in the way we run our world. It is clear that we live in a world that is witnessing an ever-growing gap between rich and poor. But not only that, these poor have been made aware of why things are the way they are, and if such a condition continues, we can expect more conflict amplified by the spread of dangerous technologies. Today, we are in the midst of a global war on terror, in fact, Al Qaeda has committed itself to the acquisition of nuclear material to create a bomb; all of this driven by the perception that for at least two centuries the Western countries have exploited technology to keep Islamic nations down. Right or wrong these are the perceptions. The angry words of the prophet Amos and the stern lesson of the parable summon us to see the injustice around us and to address it with the Gospel vision and reality of the Kingdom of God. In I. Tim. we are called to pursue justice-it is an active thing and at the heart of Christian faith. More than knowing our Catechism and obeying the rules is the summons to love one another-the great commandment of Jesus to his followers. That love is to show itself in the personal, interpersonal and social dimensions of life. For that is the purpose of life, to learn to love as God loves; to be the image of God in the world! Such is revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. In the resurrection we are told that a life of sharing and sacrificing for others is the path to eternal life that can be experienced in the now in our love that we extend to others, especially those suffering great need. It’s a simple enough proposition that can only be accepted when, like Jesus, we surrender our fears to God and trust that in sharing and sacrificing we miss nothing in this world and gain everything. Lazarus takes many forms in our times. He comes in the form of the suffering people of Darfur, the homeless in Rocky Hill, the teenager frightened by life, the wounded self that needs attention, the victims of violence-Lazarus is all around us. Will I, will we, see him? We I, will we, choose to see him? Everything may be riding on it. Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D.Min. Return to Saint James Home Page |