«There was a certain rich man. He dressed in purple and scarlet and feasted sumptuously day after day. A kind of beggar, named Lazar, was lying at his gate, full of sores. When the beggar died, the angels carried him into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And he cried: “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, let him at least dip the tip of his finger in water and moisten my tongue, because I am suffering terribly in this flame!” But Abraham said: “Son, remember that you have received everything good during his life and Lazar only bad. Now here he is happy, and you are worried” (Lk 16,19-20a.22.24-25).
Today I want to join you in the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus. The lives of these two people seem to flow on parallel tracks: their living conditions are opposite and do not correspond in the least. The door of the rich man’s house is always closed to the poor man who is outside, trying to eat at least the scraps from the rich man’s table. The latter was clothed in sumptuous clothing, while Lazarus was covered with sores; the rich man feasts lavishly every day, while Lazarus dies of hunger. Only dogs take care of him and come to lick his wounds. This scene recalls the harsh admonition of the Son of man at the last judgment: «For I was hungry, and you did not give me anything to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink; (…) I was naked, and you did not divide me; I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me” (Mt 25, 42-43).
Jesus says that one day the man died. The poor and the rich die, they have the same fate. We all share it, don’t we? There are no exceptions. And so the man turns to Abraham, begging him with the address “father” (v. 24.27). He invokes himself as his son, belonging to God’s people. Nevertheless, during his life he showed no regard for God, on the contrary, closed in his world of luxury and revelry, he made himself the center of everything. Excluding Lazarus, he did not consider either the Lord or his law at all. To ignore the poor is to despise God! And this we must learn well: to ignore the poor is to despise God. There is, however, one peculiarity in the parable which must be noticed. The rich man has no name, only an adjective: “rich”; while the poor man’s name is repeated five times, and “Lazarus” means “God helps.” Lazarus resting at the door is a living call to the rich man to remember God, but the rich man does not accept this call. So he will be condemned not because of his riches, but because he was unable to sympathize with Lazarus and help him.
In the second part of the parable, we find Lazarus and the rich man after their death (vs. 22-31). There, on the other side of life, the situation was reversed: poor Lazarus was carried by angels to heaven to Abraham, while the rich man, on the other hand, is thrown into torment. Then the rich man «raised his eyes and saw from afar Abraham and Lazarus in his bosom». He seems to see Lazarus for the first time, but his words betray him: «Father Abraham», he says, «have mercy on me and send Lazarus» – so he knows him, right? – «send Lazarus to dip at least the tip of his finger in the water and moisten my tongue, because I am suffering terribly in this flame!» Now the rich man recognizes Lazarus and asks him for help, while during his life he pretended not to see him. How many times, how many times, many people pretend not to see the poor! The poor don’t exist for them… He used to deny him even the scraps from his table, and now he would like,
He still believes that he can claim rights for his previous social status. Proclaiming that it is impossible to comply with his request, Abraham personally offers the key to the whole story: he explains that the good and the bad have been redistributed in such a way as to compensate for earthly injustice, and the door that separated the rich from the poor in life has turned into a «great chasm». As long as Lazarus was at his house, it was an opportunity for salvation for the rich man: he could open the door, help Lazarus… but now that both are dead, the situation has become irreversible. There is no direct appeal to God, but the parable clearly calls for vigilance: God’s mercy towards us is linked with our mercy towards our neighbor; if this is missing, it does not find space in our closed heart, it cannot enter. Unless I open the door of my heart to the poor, that door will remain closed. Even for God. And this is horrible.
Now the rich man thinks of his brothers, who are in danger of ending up like him, and begs that Lazarus may return to the world to warn them. But Abraham answers: “They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them”. In order to convert, we do not need to expect miraculous events, but we must open our hearts to God’s word, which calls us to love God and our neighbor. God’s word can bring a hardened heart to life and heal it from its blindness. The rich man knew God’s word, but he did not let it enter his heart, he did not listen to it, therefore he was unable to open his eyes and have compassion for the poor.
No messenger and no message can replace the poor we meet on the road, because in them Jesus himself meets us: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers, you did for me” (Mt 25:40), says Jesus. Thus, in the reversal of fortunes that the parable describes, the secret of our salvation is hidden, in which Christ combines poverty with mercy. Listening to this gospel, all of us, together with the poor of the earth, can sing with Mary: «He has dethroned the powerful and exalted the lowly. He fed the hungry with good things and let the rich go empty-handed” (Luke 1:52-53
