Sacred Heart Parish

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We are looking for persons able to transcribe the audio portion of our town meetings.
Please call the rectory if you can help.


26th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (C)

  1. The beginning of the religious education program here at the parish can serve to remind us that the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit makes us believers and that the hard work of religious education makes us intelligent believers. For our young people of college age, only intelligent faith can survive and thrive in a culture as complex and confusing as our own. This is why our parish takes seriously the Lord’s mandate – “Go and teach all nations”. The blanket words for the fulfilling of this command are “evangelization” and “catechesis”: this means challenging active parishioners to deepen their faith in the Lord Jesus, ever-present among us in word and sacrament; this means bringing the Gospel of reconciliation to those alienated from the Church at this time; this means welcoming those who are not members of the Church to come and see; this means making the Gospel more effective in the public square by applying it to the personal and social dilemmas of the day. All this, of course, is our work but only if we are under the grace of the Holy Spirit.

  2. Fulfilling the Lord’s command to go out and teach faces formidable difficulties in our day. Our culture is a secular culture which means – God and religion are no longer public realities but have been privatized as though they were matters of personal taste. Our culture is a consumer culture which means – success is measured by what we have, what we buy, what we consume. This is not unlike the situation described in our Gospel reading today. When secular, consumer mentalities prevail, as in the case of the six brothers portrayed in Jesus’ story, people never get to the point of raising the big questions about life, about death, about God; and since they seem to experience no religious stirrings whatsoever, they see no reason why they should trouble themselves about the gospel, about religious belief and practice.

  3. God speaks important words to us today through Amos the shepherd-prophet, through Paul the apostle, through Luke the evangelist. Our Gospel story is often called the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. More properly, it seems better to refer to it as the “parable of the six brothers”. The five surviving brothers, like the one who had died, are of this world only. They live in selfish luxury, are deaf to God’s word, think that death ends everything and are completely oblivious to the truth that Lazarus represents most of the folks who live on planet earth – in Jesus’ day and in our own. Not long ago, I was discussing this story with our 9th graders. I suggested that they read the story with specific suggestions in mind. They were to imaginatively place themselves among the Galilean citizens who were attentively listening to Jesus. Then they were to ask two questions: How would I react to the story if I were numbered among the poor people of Galilee? And how would I react to the story if I were a rich Galilean like the Pharisee? And as they were asking these questions, they should keep in mind that Pope John Paul II – over two decades ago – spoke this parable at the United Nations and applied it to the relationship between the rich nations of the first third of the world and the poor nations who make up the two-thirds part of the world.

  4. Our Gospel parable has two themes. The first we call the Great Reversal. The storyline clearly tells us that radical changes of fortune in the afterlife are quite possible indeed. One can very well expect compensation – good or bad – for the use of material possessions at one’s disposal this side of the grave. This part of the parable is social commentary. It does not tell us that possessions are bad; it does not tell us that being money-conscious is bad; rare is the family that does not have to think about food, shelter, medical services, educational opportunities and the like. Being money-conscious is not the problem as long as we school and discipline ourselves and our children in the art of being God-conscious. This is what makes the plight of the dead rich man so tragic – he was never God-conscious, and now his time for conversion has ended; his fate is irrevocably sealed.

  5. In the second part of the parable, Jesus speaks directly to his hearers. This is no longer social commentary, nor is the Lord giving us a lesson about the afterlife. Rather, he speaks directly to the Pharisees and anyone else in his audience who might resemble the six rich brothers. He wants to warn them about impending danger. Not even the return of someone from the dead would be of any avail whatsoever to those who have not been listening to Moses and the prophets. As Luke in his Gospel retells the story some six or seven decades after the public ministry of Jesus, no longer is the story directed just to people like the Pharisees but to those in the Christian community as well. Thus, Luke has in mind not only the words of the original story but the mystery of the Lord’s death and resurrection as well. I would highlight one of the statements Abraham makes to the dead brother – “My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus received what was bad; but now Lazarus 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.” This is so very true of our world today. Just think of the chasms that exist today between nations, between races, between those who have very much and those who have very little, between the wealthy industrial nations of the first third of the world and the poverty and disease that are rampant in the two-thirds part of the world. God’s teaching in this parable is not to make us feel guilty because we live in the first third of the world; God’s teaching is meant to make us free to live the Gospel which can empower us to recognize, underscore and confront the great abysses or divisions in our world. Justice and charity are matters of life and death for the Gospel and for the world. We who have the grace to follow Christ must be expert in charity, and work diligently with civil authorities to construct just situations. This would seem to be the meaning of our parable for us today. All the while, overshadowing our parable and overshadowing all the chasms in our world today is the great and ultimate chasm between heaven and hell.