26th Sunday Ordinary :: Op-stjoseph.org

26th Sunday in O.T. 09-30-07 Scripture Readings First Amos 6:1a, 4-7 Second 1 Tm 6:11-16 Gospel Lk 16:19-31 Prepared by: Fr. Lawrence J. Donohoo, O.P. 1. Subject Matter •

In contrast to last Sunday’s first reading from the Book of Amos, the prophet today castigates the decadent Israelites not for oppressing the poor, but for sins of omission touching on social injustice and political neglect.

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First Timothy urges a pro-active perseverance in virtue and fidelity to the Gospel that is particularly alert to how the young Church must show itself before a hostile and critical culture as well as before Christ who nobly appeared before Pilate and who will appear at the consummation of the age.

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The parable of Lazarus, portraying a glaring sin of omission on the part of the rich man, is a locus classicus for the Church’s social justice teachings.

2. Exegetical Notes •

“The evil of the life of pleasure described here is not the self-indulgence itself so much as the refusal to notice or care about what has happened to Israel.” (NJBC)

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“Compete well for the faith” (1 Tm 6:12). This may be read in tandem with 2 Tm. 4:7 that describes St. Paul’s own fidelity in the Christian battle.

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The doxology concluding this passage, which parallels the shorter prayer at 1 Tm 1:17, “is Hellenistic Jewish in inspiration and stresses both God’s transcendence and his superiority to all earthly rulers.” (NJBC)

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“Luke is fond of using ‘example stories’ instead of parables (see 10:29-37; 12:16-21; 16:1931; 189-14) to arrest his readers’ attention and drive home a lesson.” “19-31. This is a twotiered (vv 19-265, 27-31) example story which focuses on the rich man, his five brothers, and the readers. It asks: Will the five brothers and readers follow the example of the rich man or heed Jesus’ teaching and that of the OT about care of the needy like Lazarus and thus be children of Abraham?” (NJBC)

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The rich man’s exchange with Abraham confirms that he has failed to conform to the requirements of the Old Testament.

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church •

CCC 2145 The faithful should bear witness to the Lord’s name by confessing the faith without giving way to fear. Preaching and catechizing should be permeated with adoration and respect for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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CCC 52 God, who “dwells in unapproachable light”, wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son. By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity.

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CCC 736 By this power of the Spirit, God's children can bear much fruit. He who has grafted us onto the true vine will make us bear “the fruit of the Spirit: . . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” “We live by the Spirit”; the more we renounce ourselves, the more we “walk by the Spirit.”

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CCC 1832 The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: “charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity.”

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CCC 1859 “Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.”

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CCC 2831 [T]he presence of those who hunger because they lack bread opens up another profound meaning of this petition [“Give us this day our daily bread”]. The drama of hunger in the world calls Christians who pray sincerely to exercise responsibility toward their brethren, both in their personal behavior and in their solidarity with the human family. This petition of the Lord's Prayer cannot be isolated from the parables of the poor man Lazarus and of the Last Judgment.

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CCC 633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell"— Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek—because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham's bosom”: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.

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CCC 1021 Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ. The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith. The parable of the poor man Lazarus and the words of Christ on the cross to the good thief,

as well as other New Testament texts speak of a final destiny of the soul-a destiny which can be different for some and for others. 4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities •

St. Ambrose: “This seems to be a narrative rather than a parable since the name is also expressed.”

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St. Gregory: “Now our Lord mentions the name of the poor, but not the name of the rich, because God knows and approves the humble, but not the proud.”

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Pseudo-Chrysostom: “He lay at his gate for this reason; that the rich might not say, I never saw him, no one told me; for he saw him both going out and returning. The poor is full of sores, so that he might show forth in his own body the cruelty of the rich. You see the death of your body lying before the gate and you do not pity. If you regard not the commands of God, at least have compassion on your own state and fear lest you too become such as he.”

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Pseudo-Chrysostom: “But sickness has some comfort if it receives help. How great then was the punishment in that body in which with such wounds he remembered not the pain of his sores but only his hunger.”

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St. Gregory: “By one act Almighty God displayed two judgments. He permitted Lazarus to lie before the rich man’s gate, both that the wicked rich man might increase the vengeance of his condemnation, and the poor man by his trials enhance his reward. The one saw daily him on whom he should show mercy; the other that for which he might be approved.”

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St. Augustine: “If you would not fall into a childish mistake, you must understand Abraham’s bosom to be a retired and hidden resting-place where Abraham is. Thus it is called Abraham’s, not that it is his alone, but because he is the father of many nations, and placed first so that others might imitate his preeminence of faith.”

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St. John Chrysostom: “As it made the poor man’s affliction heavier while he lived to lie before the rich man’s gate and to behold the prosperity of others, so when the rich man was dead it added to his desolation that he lay in hell and saw the happiness of Lazarus. He felt not only the nature of his own torments but also his own punishment the more intolerable by comparing it to Lazarus’ honor.”

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St. John Chrysostom: “[The rich man] was wholly in torments, but his eyes alone were free so that he might behold another’s joy. His eyes are allowed freedom that he might be the more tortured, not having that which another possesses. The riches of others are the torments of the impoverished.”

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St. John Chrysostom: “Great punishments give forth a great cry. Father Abraham. As if he said, I call you father by nature as the son who wasted his living, although by my own fault I have lost you as a father.” [Note the interesting comparison with the parable of the prodigal son.]

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St. John Chrysostom: “See the rich man in need of the poor who was before starving. Things are changed, and it is now made known to all who was rich and who was poor. For as in the theaters, when it becomes evening and the spectators depart, those [actors] going out and laying aside their dresses in which they appeared as kings and generals are seen for who they really are—the sons of gardeners and fig-sellers. So also when death comes and the

spectacle is over and all the masks of poverty and riches are cast aside, people are judged by their works alone—the truly rich and poor, those worthy of honor and those of dishonor.” •

St. Gregory of Nyssa: “[T]he soul of Lazarus is neither anxious about present things nor looks back to anything that it has left behind. But the rich man. . .even after death is held down by his carnal life. For a person who becomes altogether carnal in his heart is not out of the reach of his passions even after he has put off his body.”

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St. Augustine: “The story may also be so understood as to take Lazarus to mean our Lord.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars •

Both St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi were born into opulence. Casting aside these riches and the great worldly expectations their families had of them, they embraced a life of simplicity, poverty, and religious renewal that became the pattern for hundreds of thousands of their followers throughout history.

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St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) combined to an exceptional degree the life of mysticism and Christian service. Embodying in her own life the virtues enumerated in the First Letter to Timothy, she directed all of her prayer and work to the service of God. After her husband’s death she devoted herself to the care of the sick at the Hospital of Genoa, where she became manager and treasurer.

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St. Peter Claver (1581-1654), the patron saint of slaves, ran out to meet them as they arrived on ships from Africa. He built a hospital to care for the sick and preached the Gospel to them when their condition allowed it.. Caring for and carrying the lepers and those afflicted with smallpox, he was despised by critics who were disgusted by his actions and manner of service.

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Catherine Doherty (1896-1985), founder of Madonna House, began her work of ameliorating the sufferings of others as a Russian Red Cross nurse volunteer during World War I. She combined in her own life and in the institutions she built the elements of community, prayer, and apostolate. Madonna House, the “motherhouse” of her work, seeks to “restore the justice and love of Jesus Christ to individuals and social institutions.”

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI All of the following quotations are taken from Deus Caritas Est, which addresses the issues of the excerpt from Amos and the Gospel parable in great contemporary detail. •

“It must be admitted that the Church's leadership was slow to realize that the issue of the just structuring of society needed to be approached in a new way. . . .In 1891, the papal magisterium intervened with the Encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII. This was followed in 1931 by Pius XI's Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. In 1961 Blessed John XXIII published the Encyclical Mater et Magistra, while Paul VI, in the Encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) and in the Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens (1971), insistently addressed the social problem, which had meanwhile become especially acute in Latin America. My great predecessor John Paul II left us a trilogy of social Encyclicals: Laborem Exercens (1981), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) and finally Centesimus Annus (1991). Faced with new situations and issues, Catholic social teaching thus gradually developed. (Deus Caritas Est).

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In order to define more accurately the relationship between the necessary commitment to justice and the ministry of charity, two fundamental situations need to be considered.

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(a) The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics. Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. . .in other words, the distinction between Church and State, or, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, the autonomy of the temporal sphere. . . . Justice is both the aim and the intrinsic criterion of all politics. Politics is more than a mere mechanism for defining the rules of public life: its origin and its goal are found in justice, which by its very nature has to do with ethics. The State must inevitably face the question of how justice can be achieved here and now. But this presupposes an even more radical question: what is justice? The problem is one of practical reason; but if reason is to be exercised properly, it must undergo constant purification, since it can never be completely free of the danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by the dazzling effect of power and special interests.

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(b) Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support.”

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“The Church's social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely, on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being. It recognizes that it is not the Church's responsibility to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly, even when this might involve conflict with situations of personal interest. Building a just social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his or her due, is an essential task which every generation must take up anew. As a political task, this cannot be the Church's immediate responsibility. Yet, since it is also a most important human responsibility, the Church is dutybound to offer, through the purification of reason and through ethical formation, her own specific contribution towards understanding the requirements of justice and achieving them politically.

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“Faith by its specific nature is an encounter with the living God—an encounter opening up new horizons extending beyond the sphere of reason. But it is also a purifying force for reason itself. From God's standpoint, faith liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly. This is where Catholic social doctrine has its place: it has no intention of giving the Church power over the State. Even less is it an attempt to impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith. Its

aim is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.”

7. Other Considerations •

By comparing this passage with that of last week also taken from Amos, an instruction may be provided that contrasts sins of commission with sins of omission. A healthy Christian approach to sins of omission will avoid the extremes of scrupulosity (walking through life as a guilty bystander) and obtuseness of spirit (being oblivious of the consequences of one’s actions and the wasted potentialities of service and generosity: “to whom more is given, more is expected).”

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On the other hand, the line separating sins of commission and omission is not so precisely traced either in the Book of Amos or the book of life since many if not most sinful lifestyles reflect not only an immoral indifference to the plight of others, but in fact rest on the foundations of accumulated past injustices toward others. The practitioner of omission, then, is usually heir to past injustices committed either by himself or others. “Sinful social structures” are mostly built out of a mix of sinful omissions and commissions that are often difficult to distinguish in theory and usually impossible to distinguish in reality.

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Amos’s strong indictment of the public consequences of personal vice offers a stinging rebuke to contemporary mantras that unreflectively erect a no trespassing zone to shield private (im)morality from secular or ecclesial intervention without consideration of the harm wreaked on the larger community.

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The Pastoral Letters reflect an approach to Christian morality and spirituality that is marked by enumerations of various virtues, a special emphasis on trustworthiness and industry, a generally conservative spirit, and a concern for propriety. While these Letters faithfully reiterate St. Paul’s teaching on grace and his ecclesial emphasis on unity, their moralspiritual approach may be contrasted with his accents on accepting divine forgiveness, maximizing Christian freedom, developing liberality of spirit, and fostering a spiritual ethic that presupposes rather than concentrates on such virtues that provide entry into what may be called “Christian citizenship.”

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The approach of the Pastoral Letters to Christian morality and spirituality further offers an opportunity to contrast it with the Matthean concentration on productivity and response, the Markan accent on abnegation and the cross, the Lucan predilection for largeness of spirit and liberality, and the Johannine emphasis on love and mystical union. Such a wealth of possibilities may be illustrated by lives of the saints (e.g., Matthew—St. Dominic; Mark—St. Rose of Lima; Luke—St. Francis of Assisi; John—St. Thérèse of Lisieux) in order to illustrate the abundance of possibilities in living the Gospel.

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The complexity of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man appears in the twofold chronological staging of present (earth) and future (heaven and place of torment) as well as an increasingly expanding dramatis personae: (1) rich man and Lazarus; (2) rich man, Lazarus, and Abraham; (3) rich man, Lazarus, Abraham, and the rich man’s five brothers. Conspicuously absent in the parable is God. The entrance of the five brothers prevents the parable from an easy eschatological resolution and brings it back to earth.

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Like the “parable” of the goats and sheep, this appears to be more than a parable in form and content—a “reality Gospel” whose moral and eschatological teachings eschew the status of analogy and seem to speak of the real thing. (See comment above on “example story.”) The Catechism’s application of the state of the dead before Christ’s redemptive work illustrates this (see above).

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The rich man in his state of torment represents an interesting blend of morality and immorality. He is selflessly concerned with his brothers by preferring their genuine good to their company in the netherworld, yet he still incapable of treating Lazarus as a person who is something other than a nuisance or a lackey.

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The emphasis in Luke (and Matthew) on the moral quality of our actions with respect to our fellow human beings (love) offers a somewhat disquieting counterbalance to the primacy of faith as our access to divine grace in the writings of Paul—and which are overemphasized in our largely Protestant American culture to the detriment of the Gospel presented in its entirety.

Recommended Resources Benedict XVI. Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) (USCCB, 2005). Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Rome: Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2004 (USCCB, 2005). St. Thomas Aquinas. Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels. Works of the Fathers. Vol. 3, Pt. 2. London, 1843. Raymond A. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer and Roland E. Murphy, eds. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1990.