Rich man in torment and
Lazarus with Abraham
Today we made a St. Vincent De Paul home visit to a wonderful woman who had lost a 13 year old son in a house fire in 2009. She was so proud of him, her daughter and her three grandchildren who live with her. She showed us pictures of new granddaughter on her phone and some old pictures from the one picture book that had survived the tragic fire.
She needed beds,stove and refrigerator so we had to give her the terrible choice of two of the three, due to limits of our St. Vincent De Paul funds. Having to make that kind of choice really bothers me since the church we work the home visits from is taking the 1.1 million it received from closing our former church Church in North Central Milwaukee and putting it into an endowment fund with the interest just going to capital improvements of Church and some outreach.
She was kind and gracious to us and when we were leaving she reached out to us. I first thought it was for a hug but than realized she want to pray with us. Pray we did, than hugs and good by. I wish the Archbishop, the pastor of the church and few leaders who are making the decision to store the money away over using it for something like the Sustainable Fund for the Works of Mercy could have this experience.
Today’s scripture reading in Church was from the Gospel of Luke (16: 10–31) where Jesus tells the Pharisees a parable about a rich man and poor beggar name Lazarus who both die. Lazarus is carried away by angels into the bossom of Aberaham while the rich man at whose door Lazarus begged for scraps, went to the netherworld where and was in torment. The rich man saw Lazarus far off at the side of Abraham. He cried out, “ Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” When Abraham said he could not do this the rich man begged him to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers so they would not come to this place of torment. Abraham said they had the prophets and Moses to listen to and sending Lazarus back would do no good.
In our struggle to have the money from the closing of Blessed Trinity Church go to the works of mercy we wrote a parable Thy Kingdom come on earth as it was in heaven. It was a positive parable of ‘what could be’ if the money was used to create a sustainable fund for the works of mercy.
Perhaps we should have written a modern day parable based on the story of the rich man and Lazarus or the rich landowner who enjoyed an abundant crop and instead of sharing it builda new barns to hold it, only to die. The Pharisees of today are Catholic Church members who say one thing and do another. As a friend once told me “God has given all his graces and blessings to the poor and there we must go to share in them.”
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