March 24, 2011
Thursday of the Second Week of Lent
More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? I, the LORD, alone probe the mind and test the heart, to reward everyone according to his ways, according to the merit of his deeds. Jeremiah 17:9-10
“He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.’” Luke 16:30-31
Piety
Our Father…who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who, by victim of circumstance, bear the heat of day,
Who art in heaven…where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being will be well,
Hallowed be they name…may we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways, your standards are not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbor.
(From The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality, by Ronald Rolheiser, New York: Doubleday, 1999, p. 189)
Study
We certainly get a strong lesson today of the difference between what we want to pursue in our human agenda and what the Lord wants us to pursue. The famous Elmer Gantry-esque expression is used…“Repent!”
The popular meaning of this is to feel remorse or be contrite about something which you have said or done. But it is action Abraham wants from the brothers of rich man, not just pious feelings of contrition. He wants them to change how they pursue their personal happiness and to be more concerned with the happiness and care of others.
Another meaning, more botanical than behavioral, is of “repent vines” which crawl along the ground. For me, that brings to mind the image of the serpent in the garden, tempting Eve and Adam to pursue their agenda and abandon God’s agenda and the kingdom to come. Our spirituality calls us to abandon our own agenda.
Recently I was reading Ronald Rolheiser’s book The Holy Longing. In it, he presents an interesting etymology/definition of church. The word ecclesiology, Rohlheiser says, comes from the Greek word for church, ekklesia, which comes from two other Greek words, ek kaleo (ek meaning “out of” and kaleo, being the verb “to call”). Thus ekklesia (church) literally means to be called out of our normal agenda into the agenda driven by Christ – a lesson that came too late to the rich man who ignored Lazarus and pursued his own agenda.
Action
In light of this story about the rich man – and wouldn’t we all be considered rich if we are reading this on a computer with Internet access in a world where two billion people live on less than $2 a day – perhaps we should reconsider our own “To Do” lists.
What would we change about our daily routine to make sure that anyone who represents Lazarus at our gate has what is needed to meet his or her needs?
