Reference:
https://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2019/09/mass-readings-for-september-2019/#29sep
I quote
My friend, remember that while you lived, you had everything good, and Lazarus had everything bad. Now he is happy, and you are in pain.
end quote
Today's readings invite us to reflect on those less privileged, those in dire lack of the basics that we take for granted to overflowing.
In the developed world obesity and its resulting illnesses testifies to excesses evidencing self serving behaviour ignoring Lazarus in full view begging for crumbs.
Today's gospel sketches a picture of suffering for the needy, and also for those who live to excess.
Life teaches each of us that our choices provide us with all that we deserve.
As we sow, so shall we reap.
Hell is a condition of our own making, reflecting all that we construct leading to unhappiness, and depression concealed behind our devotion to those pills assisting us cope with the misery that we have fashioned to alleviate our fear of losing out on life's goodies.
“Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire... Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; greed binds the selfish man, by which he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). But neither fear nor self-interest is undefiled, nor can they convert the soul.
Only charity can convert the soul, freeing it from unworthy motives.”
― St. Bernard of Clairvaux
end
Responses