26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear Parishioners,

“The Lord …. loves the just”, says our psalm today, inviting us to meet this God who loves justice so that we too can be lovers and builders of justice.

In today´s Gospel through two opposite characters, Dives and Lazarus, Jesus gives us a light about the reality of our lives and the whole humanity. Dives (from Latin “rich man”). This character represents each one of us because we have all received from God many material and spiritual blessings, human capacities, qualities, knowledge. Lazarus (form Hebrews “God is my help”). Lazarus also represents each one of us insofar as we are people in need, with deficiencies, emptiness, with spiritual and material hunger, and hunger for love. The parable finishes with the Dives’ damnation and the Lazarus’ salvation. But it must be said that no one is saved just for being poor and no one is condemned just for being rich. What saves us now and for always is keeping open our spirit to justice always hand in hand with the Mercy of God. It saves us, heals us when in our poverty and neediness, we ask humbly for help, both from God and other people. It saves us to pray, to share our needs. When we get don’t want to show what we lack, our own neediness and we hide and close ourselves to other people and don’t ask for help, here we condemn ourselves.  Lazarus shows us, “your poverty, your neediness is a precious opportunity because you need to trust in God and other people, and this will strengthen your relationships both with God and other people.

Dives’ attitude shows us how stuck we can get. Even when he’s already died, he continues to ask to be served, to send Lazaro to refresh him, and to warn his family. He isn´t able to recognize his injustice towards Lazarus and ask for forgiveness.

What can save us is asking God to transform our greed and pride, to free us from thinking that we have nothing to offer, to ask forgiveness for our blindness and put ourselves at the service of those who need us. It saves us to recognize what we have, be it great or little, to be thankful and to share what we have with joy.

We need a deep conversion to the justice and mercy of God.

Pope Francis invites us to this conversion to the justice also in our relation with all creation.

Laudato Si # 218 In calling to mind the figure of Saint Francis of Assisi, we come to realize that a healthy relationship with creation is one dimension of overall personal conversion, which entails the recognition of our errors, sins, faults and failures, and leads to heartfelt repentance and desire to change. […] “To achieve such reconciliation, we must examine our lives and acknowledge the ways in which we have harmed God’s creation through our actions and our failure to act. We need to experience a conversion, or change of heart”.

God bless,

Angelica Ramiro, FMVD