Spirituality of the Readings
Rags and Riches
A wise man came to a banquet, dirty and dressed in rags. The host protested his sloppy appearance and told him to go dress properly. Then he would be welcome.
So the prophet went and bathed in the river and then dressed himself in the finest clothing he could borrow. Returning to the party he found himself warmly welcomed and even honored.
But as the evening proceeded, someone noticed the man sitting in a corner. The host demanded to know why the man was putting all the expensive food, spoon by spoon, into the sleeve of his fine garment!
The man answered, “It was not me that you invited to the banquet; obviously it was my clothes. So I am giving them what a guest should receive!”
Which is more important, the human person or the luxuries of life by which s/he is surrounded?
A second story, this one from the Gospel for Sunday.
A rich man went to hell.
In life a poor beggar had lain at his door, starving, but he had ignored this tramp entirely. When both of them died, the poor man, surprisingly, was cradled in heaven in the bosom of Abraham, while the rich man was agonizing in flames. Fine food and fine clothes, his normal fare, did not save him.
The First Reading has a description of the luxury which the rich man had preferred instead of his fellow human being. God used this story to describe the complacent people in Zion, who were
lying on beds of ivory. … They eat lambs taken from the flock and calves from the stall! … They drink wine from precious bowls and anoint themselves with the best oils. …
God says they shall be the first to go into exile.
If you live in the “First World”—in the United States, for example—the amount of coddling you receive every single day far surpasses anything described in these stories. Our population uses a tremendous portion of the world’s resources. Are you and I helping to overlook the world’s people as we “stretch on our couches” and gobble up our television shows? Are we, like the rich man, never glancing at the poor outside our door? In death, that man got exactly what his whole life had pointed to: a future empty of true relationship to anyone else!
The rich man cried out from hell, “Send Lazarus [the poor man] to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.” But father Abraham replied from heaven that the gulf was too wide. The rich man then at last thought to ask help for someone else: “send someone from the dead to warn my five brothers so this does not happen to them too!”
Father Abraham answered,
If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded
if someone should rise from the dead.
Listen to those words!
Someone at last has risen from the dead. Will you and I be persuaded finally to give people in need what they deserve, or will we continue, totally absorbed in how we are fed and dressed?
John Foley, SJ
**From Saint Louis University