Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 29th September 2019

Meister des Codex Aureus Epternacensis

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

But you, (man of God), pursue righteousness,
devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.
Compete well for the faith. (1 Tim 6:11)

I apologise for bringing into this reflection a very topical character, and I hope when I reread my own words in ages to come, that her witness may still be a marker for the change we need both in our attitude to life on our planet and to the responsibilities we have towards it. I think of the young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, who as only the young can, has captured the world's attention by her single-minded focus and vibrantly angry words, aimed at our leaders, and yes all of us too.

The words that captured my imagination are these:

"Fifty percent (of cutting back on CO2 emissions) may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us - we who have to live with the consequences". (UN Climate Action Summit, NY, 23/09/18)

Why? Easy, the first reading we have from Amos places before us a world of the have's, rich people self referential, not at all bothered by others misfortunes, but the voice of the prophet calls them out, warns them:

"Therefore, now they shall be the first to go into exile,

and the carousing of those who lounged shall cease".(Am 6:7)

The good times are at an end, the reckoning for all they have and have not done is coming, but with it comes not annihilation, but a real awakening to the presence of the Lord, who we discover in the narrative, the House of Israel fears because of their sins. So underneath it all the rich, the loungers and takers know that their life style is very wrong, especially when others have nothing and where the consequences of their behaviour is far reaching into future generations. That's why I homed in on her image of the future struggling to live in a world we possibly have irrevocably destroyed.

I have never known real intense hunger, that hunger of the starving, nor have I known deprivation, so it takes a slight adjustment of my imagination to picture the horrors of a world outside this green and still fairly pleasant land, where there is simply little hope of survival unless immediate and sustained action is taken to remedy the problem. Not by throwing money and gifts at them as a panacea, but helping them change the whole infra-structure of their lives, enabling them to survive with dignity. We try as Churches and philanthropic groups, but we need more effort on behalf of the poor by the very rich.

So the story of Dives (remember this is not his name it simply means rich person) and Lazarus is part of a bigger wake up call. We cannot afford to ignore the Lazarus' of our day, we simply cannot carry on with the indulgences of the rich in a world where the gulf between the haves and the have nots is as great as that between Lazarus and the rich man.

And yes, let's think hard about the ending of this story, death is the great leveller and after that, well like it or not, comes some form of judgement! Maybe Jesus preaches this story in such bleak terms, to bang into our imaginations the point that we have a responsibility towards our poorer neighbours and fragile life-systems. Greta Thunberg reminds us that it is her generation who will have to put up with mess, our mess, and if as she suggests we may not be forgiven, then alas we face an eschatological problem, for we desperately need forgiveness in order to reconcile with God and each other!

You may not approve of Greta, but for me she is a pointer to my own feeble attempts to care for the planet, we must truly repent, pursue righteousness and love in true self-service for the other! My prayer is that the stark image of Dives and Lazarus with Father Abraham, the great and insurmountable chasm between them, is not the final word, rather the hint in Abraham's penultimate words: 'But Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.' (Lk 16:29). We have Christ, let us listen to his words. Amen

Lectio

Psalm 146 (NIV)

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

Do not put your trust in princes,
in human beings, who cannot save.

When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.

Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.

He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them-
he remains faithful forever.

He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,

the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

The Lord reigns forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.

Praise the Lord.

Pope Francis General Audience

Wednesday, 18 May 2016

Poverty and Mercy (cf Lk 16:19-31)

… the parable clearly warns: God's mercy toward us is linked to our mercy toward our neighbour; when this is lacking, also that of not finding room in our closed heart, He cannot enter. If I do not thrust open the door of my heart to the poor, that door remains closed. Even to God. This is terrible.

At this point, the rich man thinks about his brothers, who risk suffering the same fate, and he asks that Lazarus return to the world in order to warn them. But Abraham replies: "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them". In order to convert, we must not wait for prodigious events, but open our heart to the Word of God, which calls us to love God and neighbour. The Word of God may revive a withered heart and cure it of its blindness. The rich man knew the Word of God, but did not let it enter his heart, he did not listen to it, and thus was incapable of opening his eyes and of having compassion for the poor man. No messenger and no message can take the place of the poor whom we meet on the journey, because in them Jesus himself comes to meet us: "as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt 25:40), Jesus says. Thus hidden in the reversal of fate that the parable describes lies the mystery of our salvation, in which Christ links poverty with mercy.

Dear brothers and sisters, listening to this Gospel passage, all of us, together with the poor of the earth, can sing with Mary: "He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away" (Lk 1:52-53).