Newsletter September 25th 2022 (26th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

If when we listen to today’s gospel about Lazarus and the rich man, we tend to identify with Lazarus, we miss the whole point of the story. We, collectively, are the rich man. In Europe we have a mountain of beef, a mountain of cereals, a mountain of butter, a lake of wine and a lake of milk, that cost us a fortune to maintain. These are only the crumbs that fall from our table. Amos” warning is aimed directly at us: “Woe to those ensconced snugly in Zion.” The problem about being collectively responsible for the world’s starving masses is that we can so easily shrug off our personal responsibility. You may be living in a bed-sitter with few comforts or struggling to meet the mortgage repayments on your home. Yet all the services we benefit from, our public transport   system, our education, our health services etc. derive from the rich man’s club to which we belong. We dine at the rich man’s table.