The punch line

It’s like walking nonchalant wrapped up in our own imagined aura. Then we reel back wondering what hit us. We could get down to the pavement to find ourselves all dirtied with mud and grime and damned miserable. Just like the unfeeling rich man who is damned in today’s Gospel story. Very like us, too when we get so inordinately fond of money. Strange, how hard a master money can be; its hold on us doesn’t seem to let go long after we are dead and turning in our graves. The Psalmist will tell us how we can liberate ourselves from this tyranny: “Happy he . . . who secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, who sets captives free, gives sight to the blind. For the Lord raises up those that were bowed down; the Lord loves the just, the Lord protects strangers, the fatherless and the widow He sustains” (Ps. 146:5-9).

We say we are sticklers in following the Law both of heaven and of earth; and mind you, we are that punctilious about it. But we are blindly indifferent to the agony of the poor and all those who suffer from want. So the Gospel of today addresses itself to such as we who do not recognize that the poor and the lowly are God’s representatives. To them we owe “taxes” and are expected to share the land with them in the form of alms. “Between you and us there is fixed a great abyss, so that those who might wish to cross from here to you cannot do so, nor can anyone cross from your side to us.” When we are already right there in the great divide, don’t say we were not told beforehand; it would be too late to ask God to send his angels to warn us that such an eternal predicament awaits those who did not give a damn to Lazarus’ kind who would be grateful if even the morsels of food for the dogs could ease their hunger.

When we were young, the old folks were quite particular about the one measure made of bamboo almost a foot long. We did not give beggars money in those days. The beggars were grateful if we pour one measure of rice in their proffered sack. But in those days, rice was symbol of the good we share, the good we diffuse, the hunger or thirst or any suffering for that matter we alleviate, the happiness we give to the least among us in earthly advantages. This is our passport to the eternal Kingdom. As for the “rich man” who died, it was too late. Lazarus, the poor hungry man could not even dip his finger in water to quench the rich man’s thirst with a drop. Yes, that’s what is going to hit us like a punch on right or left which will make us reel to the realization that the die is cast. Then we don’t say in our eternal misery that we were not told. Let’s have the punch line right now as it is served to us by Luke’s narrative of the rich man and the poor man who died. Let it hit us the way it should right there in the very depths of our souls — that know-ledge of the Law is insufficient if it is not kept with humble compunction, that the poor we always have with us if we are the moneyed lot or the inordinately rich. And if we are poor ourselves whether materially or in spirit, then, blessed are we. We are right in the bosom of the Father.

26th S in O.T.: Lk 16:19-31