Your conscience and mine (Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Cycle C)

The parable in today’s gospel describes these two characters, pointing out powerfully the contrast between them. The rich man goes about clothed in purple and the finest linen, the poor man’s body is covered with sores. The rich man feasts splendidly not only in times of festival but daily, the poor man is thrown away at his doorstep, unable to bring to his mouth what falls from the rich man’s table. Only dogs come near to lick his wounds when they come looking for something in the garbage. At no point does it talk about the rich man exploiting the poor man or that he has mistreated or despised him. You could say that he hasn’t done anything bad. However his whole life is inhuman, since he only lives for his own well-being. His heart is made of stone. He completely ignores the poor man. He has him right in front of him, but doesn’t see him. The poor man is right there: sick, hungry, abandoned, but the rich man is unable to cross the threshold to take care of him. We mustn’t deceive ourselves. Jesus isn’t just denouncing the situation in 30 CE Galilee. He’s trying to shake the conscience of those of us who have grown accustomed to live in abundance while right outside our door people are living and dying in the most absolute misery. It is inhuman to enclose ourselves in our «society of well-being» while completely ignoring that other «society of not-at-all-well-being». It is cruel to keep nourishing a “secret fantasy of innocence” that allows us to live with a clear conscience, thinking that it’s everybody’s fault and it’s nobody’s fault. Our first step today Could be to break through indifference. Stop letting ourselves continue to enjoy a well-being that is void of compassion. Stop keeping ourselves mentally isolated in order to put the misery and hunger that fills our world into some abstract far off place, thereby being able to live without hearing any noise or cries for help or weeping. The Gospel can help us live wide awake, not letting us end up more and more closed to the sufferings of the abandoned, not letting us lose our sense of fraternal responsibility, not letting us stay passive when we can act. Dom Elder Camara was a Brazilian bishop. Controversial, but always close to the poor and the forgotten. He used to say a phrase that has always made me think. I want to leave here to remove my own conscience again, leave me uncomfortable and help me think more about others. “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist” • AE