Posted on 09/29/2019 7:48:47 AM PDT by Salvation
This Sunday’s Gospel about the rich man and Lazarus contains some important teachings on judgment and Hell. We live in times in which many consider the teachings on Hell to be untenable. They struggle to understand how a God described as loving, merciful, and forgiving could assign certain souls to Hell forever. Despite the fact that the Doctrine of Hell is taught extensively in Scripture as well as by Jesus Himself, it does not comport well with many modern notions and so many people think that it has to go.
The parable addresses some of the modern concerns about Hell. Prior to looking at the reading, it is important to understand why Hell has to exist. I have written on that topic extensively here. What follows is a brief summary of that lengthier article.
Hell must exist for one essential reason: respect. God has made us free and respects our freedom to choose His Kingdom or not. The Kingdom of God is not a mere abstraction. It has some very specific values, and these are realized and experienced perfectly in Heaven.
The values of the Kingdom of God include love, kindness, forgiveness, justice to the poor, generosity, humility, mercy, chastity, love of Scripture, love of the truth, worship of God, and the centrality of God.
Unfortunately, there are many people who do not want anything to do with those values, and God will not force them to. Everyone may want to go to Heaven, but Heaven is not merely what we want it to be; it is what it is, as God has set it forth. Heaven is the Kingdom of God and its values in all their fullness.
There are some (many, according to Jesus) who live in a way that consistently demonstrates their lack of interest in Heaven. They do this by showing that they are not interested in one or many of the Kingdom’s values. Hell “has to be” because God respects people’s freedom to choose to live in this way. Because such people demonstrate that they do not want Heaven, God respects their freedom to choose “other arrangements.”
In a way, this is what Jesus says in John’s Gospel, when He states that judgment is about what we prefer: And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil (John 3:19). In the end, you get what you want: light or darkness. Sadly, many prefer the darkness. The day of judgment discloses our final preference; God respects that even if it is not what He would want for us
This leads us to the Gospel, which we will look at in three stages.
I. The Ruin of the Rich Man – As the Gospel opens, we see a rich man (some call him Dives, which simply means “rich”). There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day.
It is clear that he lives very well and has the ability to help the poor man, Lazarus, who is outside his gate. But he does not do so.
The rich man’s sin is not so much one of hate as of indifference. He is living in open rejection of one of the Kingdom’s most important values: love of the poor. His insensitivity is literally a “damnable sin”; it lands him in Hell. His ruin is his insensitivity to the poor.
The care of the poor may be a complicated matter, and there may be different ways of approaching it, but we can we never consider ourselves exempt if it is within our means to help. We cannot avoid judgment for greed and insensitivity. As God said in last week’s reading regarding those who are insensitive to the poor, The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Never will I forget a thing they have done (Amos 8:7). God may well “forget” many of our sins (cf Is 43:23; Heb 8:12), but apparently disregarding the needs of the poor isn’t one of them.
This rich man has repeatedly rejected the Kingdom by his greed and insensitivity. He lands in Hell because he doesn’t want Heaven, where the poor are exalted (cf Luke 1:52).
Abraham explains the great reversal to him: My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
II. The Rigidity of the Rich Man – You might expect the rich man to have a change of heart and repent, but he does not. Looking up into Heaven, he sees Lazarus next to Abraham, but rather than finally recognizing Lazarus’ dignity and seeking his forgiveness, he tells Abraham to send Lazarus to Hell with a pail of water to refresh him. The rich man still sees Lazarus as beneath him (even though he has to look up to see him); he sees Lazarus as an errand boy.
Notice that the rich man does not ask to be admitted to Heaven! Although he is unhappy with where he is, he still does not seem to desire Heaven and the Kingdom of God with all its values. He has not really changed. He regrets his current torment but does not see Heaven as a solution. Neither does he want to appreciate Lazarus’ exalted state. The rich man wants to draw Lazarus back to the lower place he once occupied.
This helps to explain why Hell is eternal. It would seem that there is a mystery of the human person that we must come to accept: we reach a point in life when our character is forever fixed, when we can no longer change. When exactly this occurs is not clear; perhaps it is at the moment of death itself.
The Fathers of the Church often thought of the human person as clay on a potter’s wheel. As long as it is on the wheel and moist it can be molded, but when the clay is taken off the wheel and placed in the fiery kiln (fire is judgment day (cf 1 Cor 3:15)), its shape is forever fixed.
The rich man manifests this fixed quality. He is unhappy with his torments, even wanting to warn his brothers, but apparently he does not intend to change or somehow he is unable to change.
This is the basis for the teaching that Hell is eternal: once having encountered our fiery judgment, we will no longer be able to change. Our decision against the Kingdom of God and its values (a decision that God, in sadness, respects) will be forever fixed.
III. The Reproof for the Rest of Us – The rich man, though he cannot or will not change, would like to warn his brothers. He thinks that perhaps if Lazarus would rise from the dead and warn them, they would repent!
We are the rich man’s brethren, and we are hereby warned. The rich man wanted exotic measures, but Abraham said, “They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.” “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.”
This reply is dripping with irony, given Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
We should not need miraculous signs to bring us conversion. The phrase “they have Moses and the prophets” is a Jewish way of saying that they have Scripture.
The Scriptures are clear to lay out the way before us. They give us the road map to Heaven and we only need to follow it. We ought not to need an angel or a ghost or some extraordinary sign. The Scriptures and the teachings of the Church should be sufficient.
Their message is clear enough: daily prayer, daily Scripture, weekly Eucharist, frequent confession, and repentance all lead to a change of heart wherein we begin to love the Kingdom of God and its values. We become more merciful, kind, generous, loving toward the poor and needy, patient, chaste, devout, and self-controlled.
Hell exists! It has to exist because we have a free choice to make, and God will respect that choice even if he does not prefer it.
Each of us is free to choose the Kingdom of God—or not. This Gospel makes it clear that our ongoing choices lead to a final, permanent choice, at which time our decision will be forever fixed.
The modern world needs to sober up. There is a Hell and its existence is both reasonable and in conformity with a God who both loves us and respects our freedom.
If you have any non-biblical notions in this regard, consider yourself reproved. Popular or not, Hell is taught, as is the sobering notion that many prefer its darkness to the light of God’s Kingdom.
The care of the poor is very important to God. Look through your closet this week and give away what you can. Look at your financial situation and see if it is pleasing to God. The rich man was not cruel, just insensitive and unaware. How will you and I respond to a Gospel like this?
Monsignor Pope Ping!
Faith without works is dead. I will show you my faith by my works; feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless.
The problem is that satan imitates the Light to fool us. Just as a narcissist views the empathy and caring of their victims as a weakness, available to lead them astray.
There are several good books on this topic, one being Toxic Charity which reveals the benefit of teaching people to fish rather than enabling the people to be perpetual victims constantly begging for you to give them a fish.
God allows suffering for us to experience discomfort when we grow off the path that leads us toward Him.
And the poor were fed through gleaning the fields.
Give the poor work.
Who will not work, let him not eat.
Two principles which are not in conflict but rather harmony which tell us not only what God wants us to do but how he wants it done.
You heard the one about teaching a guy to fish, The corollary is those that won’t fish can cut bait or starve.
Help people to grow. Don’t enable them to be perpetual victims.
Jesus did this when He told the rich man to go and sell all his belongings and give the proceeds to the poor before following Him.
When people beg from me and ask for me to enable their victimhood I find that I often disappoint them. When people turn to God in prayer, I find myself helping them and replying, “All gratitude goes to God, not me.”
A life if gratitude toward God is a happier lufe.
Refusing to help those who are poor, due to adverse circumstances, is a sin.
Becoming poor, due to laziness and a bad attitude, and then demanding that others feed you while you decline to lift a finger for yourself, is a far greater sin.
What are the works he's speaking about? And it has nothing to do with salvation.
There’s is a story briefly related by Josephus concerning the behavior of some Priests (though Josephus blames their servants to avoid blaming them) who took the food meant to support their relatives for themselves and the result was that some of those other elderly priests starved.
Which would have been an infamous event in Israel.
Now, the “rich man” may not have been any specific persons BUT Lazaraus who was named certainly might have been.
Interesting to me is the detail of the number of brothers that the rich man had, for if we look at Josephus we also find that the sons of Ananias (who himself Josephus described as “a great hoarder up of money”) we have the same number being High Priest after their father, and a sixth if we include the son-in-law Caiaphas.
That isn’t to say that there’d been one of these boys who had died young, before Christ told the story (if He was referencing this specific family in the story), but a name of one who’d starved (and he was at the doorstep like someone who maybe should have expected to receive something) would have been enough to clue everyone in about who was the villain, who was the victim and if so the story is easily seen as very, very politically subversive by those playing politics with the priesthood (as Ananias did).
Which is to say the story may have been about something more than just neglecting the poor but about injustices inflicted on the poor.
Well when you’re cold and shivering in the middle of Kansas and no lakes around and .....
Almost sounds like communism/socialism.
What if they were unable? What if no jobs available?
I’m often critical of progressives in that they want to do good by proxy, through the government, rather than see that the command is to themselves and not how they vote.
Moreover, I point out that even if the welfare that they support is of a kinder and more agreeable form than that of the poor houses that Scrooge mentions, they too still evidence the belief that the care for the poor is the job of professionals being paid to do so rather than their own business (and like Scrooge feels he’s been demanded to do they make everyone give at the office for their professionally administered programs).
Finally, encouraging people to look to government from which their help (welfare check) comes is having them look the wrong way. That neglects the likely temptation to think you’re being held out on (ingratitude) if what you get is somehow your due, your entitlement, just for being here.
In a way this last dovetails with what I’d earlier suggested as a possibility about who Lazarus might have been (a Priest that starved, as per a story related by Josephus). For those elderly Priests certainly did have a right to expect that support, and so Lazarus might have gone to the guy stealing his food just expecting his right. You don’t have to be grateful for what you’ve a right to the way you should be for gifts. But what amounts to a provision for retirement (Priests had a retirement age, uniquely so in all Israel) is different from modern Welfare. Thus Lazarus might compare better to the pensioners in Hoovervilles than to those getting welfare today.
Thank you - the article needed your perspective lest we be told that supporting idlers who are poor by choice is incumbent upon us.
Even for those who can work there’s always a short term in which work is not yet to be had, in which you’ve stood around in the square and no one has hired you to work in their fields to borrow from another parable.
There is a difference between can’t right now and will not.
But what you bring up, things like invalids or “cannots”, are hard cases and you should not base general principals on hard cases.
Was just saying. People say “get a job” well okay but what if you can’t? There are some people who just can’t pass an interview for whatever reason. True, there are people who scam the system, but ....
Please cite passage about satan being light to fool us. Thank-you.
Read that parable again, with an acute and glistening eye.
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