Feeding the Spiritually Hungry (26.C)

If the pastor of one of Canada’s most affluent parishes can’t make his congregation feel guilty while preaching about the parable of Lazarus and the rich man he should probably find another line of work! However, I’m not much for making people feel guilty and I don’t think that concern for the poor—which many in our parish show to a remarkable degree, as it happens—is the only message in today’s Gospel.

What really struck me this time as I read the familiar parable was the rich man’s desperate pleading that Lazarus be sent to warn his brothers, to help them avoid his own unhappy fate. He was tormented by the desire to call them to repent and reform, about which he could do nothing from beyond the grave.

Let’s think about this fellow for a moment. The parable doesn’t say that the rich man kicked Lazarus as he walked by. Or more likely, he never even noticed him lying at the gate. His sin was blindness, rather than contempt. It was, we might say, not what he had done but what he had failed to do.

I have to tell you that those are the sins that frighten me—not things I knew were wrong but sins of omission I never thought about.

Is it possible that those of us who listen every Sunday to Moses and the Prophets, those of us who hear the Gospel proclaiming that Jesus has risen from the dead, are failing to warn our brothers and sisters to avoid the unhappy fate of the rich man in the story?

Is it possible that we might share the rich man’s sorrow because we have not shared with our brothers and sisters the good news of Salvation?

As you all know by now, our monthly Water in the Desert evening of adoration and prayer features a faith testimony given by someone from the parish. They do so humbly and simply but they are doing what the rich man was unable to accomplish after death: they are sharing the truth, the truth of the Gospel, with their brothers and sisters so that they might follow the poor man’s path to life and receive an eternal reward of with Abraham and the angels.

I was in Toronto last Saturday and I missed Water in the Desert but I heard a lot about Karen Magee’s testimony. She had everyone’s attention as she told how she had moved away from God as a young woman—“I put God on the shelf,” she said, “and went out on my own.” At first Karen felt great, freed from the judgement she felt from church, but that freedom was fleeting. Her self-esteem depended on the current culture but that only made her feel empty.

God found a way to enter into her life again. He used a young man named Kieran to whom she was attracted precisely because of his faith; on their first date Kieran asked Karen if she wanted to come to church with him!

Of course Kieran wasn’t the only one who showed her the goodness of God and the joy of Christian living. The members of her own family, and Kieran’s, offered her wonderful examples and prayers.

And here, if this were a parable, I would end with “and they lived happily ever after.” But life is more complex than that and God always wants more for us than even Christian family life and faithful church-going. Karen began with the famous Cursillo retreat and weekly Scripture study, which helped to open her eyes to the beauty of God’s word.

But her testimony last week reached its peak when she said “it wasn’t until I went to Alpha that I truly was able to experience that personal relationship with Christ, that he ‘personally’ loved ME.”

And she didn’t stop there: “I learned through Discovery that it was not my work that would save me, it was a personal relationship with Jesus; it was through his death and resurrection.”

At last, Karen said, “I was able to fully give my life to Christ to faithfully put him at the center because he had already saved me and he would work through me to save others.

“Now through leading Discovery I am finding my voice to bring the good news that God loves us, sin divides us, Christ has saved us and wants a personal relationship with each and every one of us.”

Alpha, as many of you know, is a series of videos and discussions that describe the basic message of Christianity. Discovery is a small-group faith study taking participants deeper into the mystery of salvation.

I could talk for half an hour on Alpha and faith studies—they are at the heart of our parish evangelization efforts. But today I am not focusing on inviting you to Alpha or Discovery. Inspired by today’s Gospel I am asking those who have taken Discovery or gone through Alpha to ask others. There is surely no greater missed opportunity than to fail to share a life-giving message with those we love or even just with those whom the Lord has placed on our path.

As the rich man realized, too late, it can be a matter of life or death. So asking someone once is not enough; if you’ve already asked them, ask them again.

Ed Zadeiks, whom we like to call Mr. Alpha in our parish, used to ask the regulars he saw at Tim Horton’s to come to Alpha, in the days when he had the time to go to Tim Horton’s. When they said no he smiled and said “I know you won’t mind if I ask you again next year.”

Dear friends, I’m not afraid that you  or I will be like the rich man in our blindness to the physical needs of others; we live in a much more compassionate and aware society than Jesus did. But I do fear that we may be blind to the spiritual hunger of those around us, a hunger less visible than what Lazarus suffered but just as painful and just as much demanding our charity.

Our parish Alpha and the Discovery faith study resumes this month. We do not need to ask God to send a messenger to warn our friends of the dangers of the modern culture. We can still, as long as we live, deliver the message ourselves.

Reading on Labour Day

 

People keep asking how my retreat was. No-one wants to believe that I was on holiday at a monastery!

(“That’s a bit weird,” one young parishioner said.)

But I very much enjoy my visits to Mount Angel Abbey, and every year I learn something new that gets me thinking about about parish life.

This year, I was struck by how important reading is to the life of the monk. As you probably know, Benedictines eat in silence—more precisely, they eat while listening to books.

At lunch and supper they hear the Bible, St. Benedict’s Rule, and some other book chosen by the abbot. During my visit last month, Abbot Jeremy Driscoll asked if I would like to see the list of books the monks have heard in the last few years, and I accepted eagerly.

It was an eye-opener! I could hardly believe so much material could be covered in a year, nor the range of books and topics.

This led me to wonder: do Catholics hear too much preaching, and too little reading?

Now this thought is still half-baked. The homily, as you know, is a very important part of the Mass, and you’d get bored pretty quickly if I just opened a book and read from it after the Gospel. After all, the monks are multi-tasking—listening to the book and eating their meal.

Still, today I would like to experiment a bit by doing some reading connected to tomorrow, Labour Day. Work is such an important topic that it deserves more thought than we usually give it, and I think I’ve found something that might help us connect this secular holiday to our spiritual journey.

What I want to read comes from a book called The Benedictine Handbook and is inspired, of course, by St. Benedict’s Rule.

        What sort of things do we think are holy?

The question seems silly and easy to answer at first. God is holy, so whatever is to do with God is holy too. This leads us very naturally to think about prayer, going to church, acting justly and other spiritual things.

All of these are holy and worthwhile, but if we concentrate on them alone, we miss out some very large parts of our lives. Most people spend much of their time working for their living, and working for and within their families. Our daily lives often seem to have nothing holy about them at all. This is a thoroughly un-Christian way of looking at things and the Rule of St Benedict provides something of an antidote.

Work is not simply … another good monastic practice… there is something about it which sums up the goals of monastic, and hence of Christian life.

At this point, you may be wondering what a sixth-century saint has to tell modern men and women about their work? Let’s read on… the author applies the Rule’s insights to our own situation in the world. 

Today there is a large degree of confusion about the purpose and value of work. There are two opposing tendencies, which to some degree are present in everyone.

One is to minimize work as much as possible, ‘clocking’ on and off, with little regard for what is done in between or the sense of purpose in it. The other is the workaholic, who cannot stop, who stays late at work, or even brings it home at weekends. Work becomes a person’s life.

Many people feel alienated from their work. While some individuals have work which is fulfilling, many more feel no connection with the actual work they do and drudge away at something whose only direct bearing on their lives is that it provides them, if they are lucky, with the means to survive and perhaps raise children.

Others feel alienated because the process of working for gain can itself be dehumanizing. People who do rotten jobs, or none at all, are easily seen as inferior, and easily see themselves as inferior.

There is also a third level of alienation… It is a curious phenomenon of social history that at some point work became something one went out to do. We talk of domestic work, but it is not seen in the same way as, say, ploughing a field or brokering a deal. The trouble with this division is that we end up with a very artificial conception of what work is. It is seen as something which earns money from ‘outside’ and is judged by what it brings in…

The worker is also judged in the same way. The focus is on what is done and for whom. We have to look instead at who is doing it.

If we wish to arrive at a Christian understanding of work, we have to begin with the basic facts of the faith. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Everything is changed by this, including our work. …

To get the right view of work, we have to get the right view of humanity. Instead of valuing certain types of work above others, we should think that each is being done by a human being, created and loved by God.

The incarnation of the Word has given us a gospel of work, the first tenet of which is that work has value precisely because it is done by human beings.

Whatever we do in our God-given capacity for action can be grace-bearing since we may do it as human beings fully restored to the full image of God who took on our nature. Perhaps this seems too grand a vision of the daily round of the office [or school or home] or factory, but we must bear in mind who is doing that daily grind: a human person made in the image of God.

At this point our reading echoes today’s Gospel, where we heard Jesus say “Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

“Work we are reluctant to do, or the unwelcome idleness of unemployment, is part of what God has taken to himself on the cross. Idleness is the enemy of the soul because it springs from the conviction that God is not found in those things that bore or hurt us.”

But he is. And so everyone in our parish is called to work. Circumstances call some to the work of prayer from a care facility, others to leadership of major enterprises, still others to the classroom, and others to the care of the home.

Our reading concludes: “[All] work, whether it be designing planes or washing dishes, is part of [what St. Benedict calls] the “labour of obedience” which brings us back to God.”

Happy Labour Day!

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The Benedictine Handbook is published by Liturgical Press. The article on “Work” quoted above is by Laurence McTaggart.