Lay Hold of the Poor Christ

Dear Friend,

Years ago a wise friar told me that I could learn a lot from the brothers I lived with day to day. I could benefit so much, he said, from their good example, and, yes, from a bad example as well. To my mind, Jesus’s story of the rich man in this Sunday’s Gospel is a fine (and poignant) illustration of the latter, a bad example to learn from. Here is the “anti-communion” apparently so evident in Jesus’s day that mars the human family to this day. 

Today, in the United States, one of the most prosperous societies in history, addictions, consumerism and materialism trap so many individuals and families even, or especially, among the very wealthy. These are dysfunctional dynamics that can blind us.

There is anguish and pain in the angry voice of the prophet Amos in the first reading. He is witness to the lost opportunities for compassion. Amos is crying out in a wilderness, across the very distance referred to in the Gospel - the “chasm” that can separate us from God and from those in need. 

The picture Paul paints in his letter to Timothy is a bold contrast to all of this. The true dignity of a faithful life and its “noble confession” is absolutely counter-cultural to the worldly nobility symbolized by the rich man’s purple garments. “Lay hold of eternal life” says Paul, and by that we can infer that we are to “lay hold” of the poor Christ, in the pain and suffering of our poverty-stricken and neglected brothers and sisters. Jesus, born in a stable, died neglected on a cross and yet is precisely, as Paul says, our “King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Paul might well be asking us: Whose example will you follow? 

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm