BRIDGING THE GAP!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Lenten Weekday

By Lorenz S. Centino, Jr.

LUKE 16: 19 - 31
19	"There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.
20	And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores,
21	who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
22	The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried;
23	and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom.
24	And he called out, `Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.'
25	But Abraham said, `Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.
26	And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.'
27	And he said, `Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house,
28	for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.'
29	But Abraham said, `They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.'
30	And he said, `No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'
31	He said to him, `If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:

A BLESSED THURSDAY TO ALL!!!

Many calamities, disasters and catastrophe the world has witnessed these days more than in the past. Because of the highly efficient means of mass communication that we have today, one disaster in a remote corner of the world can easily become a worldwide spectacle of gloom and pain. The recent tragedy in Japan and the various political and civil war in different places of our global community make people to ask as to where we are heading to. Earthquakes and tsunamis are shaking and wrecking havoc on our mother earth’s landscape that is meant to be our home while the ongoing wars have shaken our sense of being a community of people that should live in peace and harmony. In the deepest corner of many hearts is the question, “IS THIS THE END?” In fact, voices that claim the end is near is getting louder and persistent. But this question is asked from the realization, with fear and anguish, that everything can just disappear or be destroyed in an instant.

The Gospel today presents to us a parable of Jesus that brings a lot of CONTRASTS. A parable is a method that Jesus used most of the time to drive a very important lesson by way of a COMPARISON. In the parable we have the contrasts of LAZARUS and a RICH MAN, poverty and riches, heaven and hell, deprivation and surplus, comfort and anguish, hunger and feast. The notion of contrast suggests an existence of a gap between two contrasting entities. Indeed, the parable would like us to see the GAP that SEPARATES Lazarus and the rich man, between poverty and riches, between heaven and hell, between deprivation and surplus, between comfort and anguish, between hunger and feast. Interestingly, Abraham is telling the rich man that a great CHASM separates him and Lazarus.

Within the context of the parable, the root or the point of origin of this chasm is the INDIFFERENCE of the rich man clothed in purple and fine linen to the plight of the poor man covered with sores begging at his gate. The rich man was feasting sumptuously everyday while the poor man is dying each day of hunger. The poor man is simply begging for LEFT OVERS. Lazarus was not asking something that is served at the rich man’s table. He was asking pieces or morsels of left over that fell from the rich man’s table. Because of the indifference of the rich man, HEAVEN also becomes indifferent to his eternal TORMENT and ANGUISH in HELL. And so Abraham told him, “between us and you a great chasm has been FIXED, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” The chasm between the rich man and the poor man is fixed.

May this Lenten season helps us gain the spiritual strength to BUILD the BRIDGE that can become a CONDUIT for us to go to heaven instead of going to hell. This bridge, however, is something that we have to build while we are still on EARTH. Once we are in hell, we can no longer traverse the chasm that separates hell from heaven. The parable reveals to us what should this bridge be made of. It is no other than GENEROSITY! The rich man’s INDIFFERENCE to Lazarus plight becomes his bridge to hell. The parable then reveals the GAIN of being OPENHANDED! The more we open our hands to the needy, the more WIDE the GATE of HEAVEN will await us. As the rich man CLOSE the gates of his affluence from being a refuge for those who are in desperate need for help like Lazarus, so also the tighter the gates of heaven will be closed for him. So Lazarus plight invites us to become sensitive rather than indifferent, and generous or openhanded than being GREEDY in whatever little that we can give.

The name Lazarus means “GOD IS MY HELP.” Lazarus then is a figure in the parable that invites us to mold an attitude in us that always depend on the benevolent providence of God rather than on our own material possessions or resources as a source of SECURITY. A generous heart knows the generosity of God. It is then God’s generosity that will inspire us to be generous. Becoming generous and openhanded will therefore become easy if we have TRUST in GOD who is our HELP. God, as our help, will always FILL us MORE than what we give away. God will even make HEAVEN as our inheritance. Thus, we do not need any dead man to come and warn us to become generous. Jesus came already to be our WAY to heaven. Jesus is the model par excellence as to what generosity means. The mere thought on how the earthquake and tsunami in one of the RICHEST nations of Asia, Japan, was destroying in an instant to rubble and debris almost everything provides us a tragic sight that reminds us that when death comes everything that we have will be left behind. So before we leave them behind, we have to make use of them by becoming generous and openhanded, like Jesus, so that when death comes, at anytime and any circumstance, we have BUILT already our BRIDGE to HEAVEN!