(Editor’s note: The following is Bishop Lucia’s homily taken from the Sept. 28 Mass (Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time)
“Compete well for the faith …” (1 Tm 6:12)
A small college basketball team celebrated a team Mass in preparation for their first venture in the NCAA “March Madness” tournament. During the homily, the team chaplain said that 10 years from now the important thing about their basketball season will not be whether they won the championship or not. The important thing would be what they became in the process of trying to win the title.
• Did they become better human beings?
• Did they become more loving?
• Did they become more loyal to one another?
• Did they become more committed?
• Did they grow as a team and as individuals?
After the Mass, while taking off his vestments, the priest heard the coach address his players: “Sit down a minute. Father said something that is bothering me right now. I wonder what I have helped you become in the process of trying to put together a winning season.
• “Have you become better human beings?
• Have you become more loving?
• Have you become more loyal to one another?
• Have you become more committed?
• Have you grown as a team and as individuals?
“If you did, then regardless of what we do in the tournament, we are a success already. If you did not, then we have failed God, we have failed your families, we have failed your school, and we have failed one another.
“I hope to God that we have not failed. I pray to God that we have not failed.”
Sisters and brothers, in today’s Gospel, Jesus, like both the coach and priest, is asking you and me to compete well through our own care for one another … not just our own immediate families, relatives, and friends … but whoever we are neighbor to along the way. This must be important to him because this is not the first time we have heard in the last couple of months Jesus telling a story about caring for those around us … remember the Good Samaritan a few weeks ago.
In today’s parable, he tells his disciples that a person is to be held accountable not only for the wrongs one commits but also for the good one refuses to do. I find an interesting detail in our gospel reading that although we don’t know the rich man’s name, he certainly knew who Lazarus was, and yet it seemed to make no difference to him. In the parable, Jesus is not really condemning wealth. Rather, he is warning us about indifference.
The rich man had eyes, but he chose not to see. He had a gate, but he never opened it. His table overflowed, yet he never thought to share. He missed his mission. If the rich man had shared from his abundance, then he would have been enjoying life both on earth and in heaven. As St. Catherine of Siena once wrote: “All the way to heaven is heaven, if Christ is the Way.”
St. John Paul II, in his visit to the United Nations and New York City on October 2, 1979, preached on the gospel passage we have before us this morning/afternoon at a Mass in Yankee Stadium, which I was present for as a high school student.
In reference to what I just mentioned about indifference, he noted: “Was the rich man condemned because he had riches, because he abounded in earthly possessions, because he ‘dressed in purple and linen and feasted splendidly every day?’ No, I would say that it was not for this reason. The rich man was condemned because he did not pay attention to the other man. Because he failed to take notice of Lazarus, the person who sat at his door and who longed to eat the scraps from his table. Nowhere does Christ condemn the mere possession of earthly goods as such. Instead, he pronounces very harsh words against those who use their possessions in a selfish way, without paying attention to the needs of others.”
During this homily, I specifically remember the Holy Father in his deep baritone voice calling out, “America, America, Lazarus is at your door knocking!” Each of us has a “Lazarus” lying at the gate of our daily life. It may be someone poor in joy, money, health, skills, education, status, love, or even in faith. The question is: Are we noticing them?
Sisters and brothers, you and I live in a world that glorifies self, but the Gospel calls us to service. Our talents, our time, our homes, our words, our blessings are gifts from God, placed in our hands so we can be His presence to others. Though the rich man was able to see Lazarus, he didn’t think or care about him. His blessing was not shared with the poor ones. Today, our Lord Jesus is not even teaching us about sacrificial love. He is just asking us to share from the abundance of our blessings. The rich man’s tragedy is that he did not think about the people around him. He realized too late that he had missed his mission. Let it not be so for us. Let each of us do a little self-introspection “Am I walking past or towards my Lazarus?”
This afternoon, our Diocese will commission new lay ministers who have completed the Formation for Ministry Program, and who will go forth in Jesus’ name to serve their neighbors throughout the Diocese. Their commissioning is also a reminder of our own commission at Baptism to let the light of Christ radiate through us. This is something we can do no matter our age, finances, health, or even if we are stretched for time. What it requires is for us to simply pay attention to one another! For me, that is the legacy of Mother Teresa — a woman who was already serving the Lord when she heard the call within the call to leave the comfort of her convent school to serve those in the gutter. In it all, what mattered most to her was that God’s beauty and love would be seen through her to the human beings around her.
Let me conclude with the prayer she prayed each day and which her community continues to pray to this day:
Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!
Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine.
It will be you, shining on others through me.
Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me.
Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do,
the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.
Amen.
