Sunday, 1 August 2010

‘This very night the demand will be made for your soul.’ These words from today's Gospel [August 1st] haunt me. Here in Merida, I see so many poor, crippled people seeking to make a living. One armed boy selling flowers in the park, old ladies with huge growths on their faces, half covered out of embarrassment, begging. Children, being deprived of a "normal childhood" are forced to sell gum, candy and even cigarettes on the streets. Here I am, with all of my riches, with my comforts, wondering what will be demanded form me. I have been given so much, and much will be demanded form me.The rich man in today’s parable thought only of himself. We all know our tendency to the same kind of self-absorption. I can’t give anything more, I can’t live without such and such are our thoughts. We know these thoughts can shrivel up the soul. When the soul is shriveled, there is no room for love, and we are called to love.

The parable suggests that the alternative to selfishness is wisdom. Wisdom involves trying to see everything and everyone we meet as part of a marvelous, God-filled whole. What can we do to bring about human fellowship, and to help people see for themselves that only this brings joy and the solution to the many problems that beset us? Could it be companionship? Love does not consist in looking at the afflicted poor, but in looking outward together in the same direction. Companionship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies, out of which tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union.

True, we need to feel secure. But we can, perhaps unconsciously, find security only in our possessions, forgetting that our possessions are gifts from God, and all gifts, I believe are meant to be shared. In a homely way, this parable suggests, by the rich man’s sudden death, the folly of finding security in such possessions. But again it invites me to contrast this negative, ‘folly’ side with the positive, ‘wisdom’ side. Jesus is reminding us of the fact, that wisdom can fill us with awe and gratitude, that there is security.