Thursday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time, February 29, 2024

Luke 16, 19-34

Jesus said to the Pharisees: “There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’ Abraham replied, ‘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. Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’ He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.’ But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ He said, ‘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.’ ”

Today’s Gospel Reading features one of the Lord’s most fascinating parables inasmuch as it is the only one which deals with the life of the soul in the next world.  We should pay especial attention to what the Lord tells us about it.

“There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day.”  It seems very likely that the Lord is telling about two actual individuals.  He gives a name to one of the two main characters, which he otherwise never does.  He is also carefully making a point to the Pharisees: this rich man was one of them and perhaps they even dined at his home, brushing past the man on the ground in front of their friend’s house: “And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table.”  His sores came from his skin scraping against the hard ground and, untreated, would have worsened over time.  He probably suffered from what today we could call “bed sores”.  And for the dogs to come to lick these tells us something of their reek, and of the man’s helplessness.

“When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.”  Uncaring hands had carried Lazarus to the rich man’s door and left him to die — the Greek text says that he had been dropped or thrown there — and was no more of their concern.  But it is angelic hands that softly caress the soul of Lazarus and gently bear him to paradise.  The Lord, specifically, speaks of “the bosom of Abraham”.  In Ancient Greek, to say that a person was “in the bosom” of another person meant to have a place right next to that person at a banquet,  as an example of this, see John 13, 23 when at the Last Supper “there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved.”  The picture we have in the parable, then, is of a great banquet at which Abraham presides, with Lazarus placed next to him as a highly honored guest.  They are not seated on chairs but are reclining on dining couches before the table on which would be set rich food and wine.  The term itself was in use at that time, as we find from such Jewish works as the one sometimes styled “The Fourth Book of Maccabees”.  It was used to describe a place of consolation for Jewish martyrs.  

“The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.”  The Greek “Hades” is translated here as “netherworld”.  Jesus is probably speaking to the Pharisees in Greek and so this would be the word he used.  It would correspond with Gehenna, which word he uses when speaking in Aramaic to the crowds and the Apostles.  The netherworld is a distinctly different place from the bosom of Abraham although both contain the souls of the dead, for the rich man suffered in torment there.  “He raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.”  Now, the fact that the rich man recognized Abraham tells us that he must have had theological training, for there were no portraits of him as there were portraits of the great kings of the time.  This strengthens the case that he was a Pharisee and that Jesus wanted the Pharisees to whom he was telling the parable to know it.  

“Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.”  The rich man calls Abraham his “father”, but he had not acted as his son while on earth because Abraham was most hospitable to those passing by his camp (cf. Genesis 18, 2-5) and he had not given so much as a crumb to Lazarus to lay at his door for months.  We see the rich man’s desperation: he begs for a drop of water.  Part of his torment must have been to see Lazarus surrounded by so much greater richness than the rich man had ever imagined possessing.  All the rich man possesses now are the flames tearing at him: “I am suffering torment in these flames.”  His words indicate that he expects Abraham to know who he is though he does not give his name.  

“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.”  Abraham indicates that the destinies of the rich man and Lazarus were linked together by Divine Providence: the one man had received a surplus to good things and the other a severe deficit of good things.  Both had received the Law by which Almighty God provided for the poor by various means, including through alms.  The poor man existed, in a sense, in order to give an opportunity for the rich man to gain his salvation, and the rich man was given his riches precisely so that he might care for the poor man.  But the rich Pharisees was perhaps too learned to remember this.

“Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.”  This unbridgeable chasm exists because the hatred of the wicked makes unbearable the sight of the righteous enjoying themselves.  The righteous cannot cross over because of their deeply-rooted respect for God’s justice.

“Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.’   Even in hell, those who possessed power on earth cling to the illusion that they still possessed it.  The constant reminders that they do not constitute part of their torture.  Here, the rich man, no longer rich, tries to manipulate Abraham to do his will.  “They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen to them.”  By the “five brothers” we might see Jesus speaking through the rich man of his brother Pharisees, who pride themselves on their study of Moses and the Prophets.  We might speculate that Jesus was telling this parable to the town’s remaining five Pharisees.

“Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.”  Here the Lord plants a seed in the hearts of the Pharisees to whom he is speaking, that it might sprout when they hear of the Lord’s Resurrection in the weeks to come.  But if it does not, they will know well that they have no one to blame but themselves in the world to come: “f they will not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.”

As we read the Lord’s parables he is speaking to each of us directly in the present time.  How carefully we ought to consider what he says to us.