26^th Sunday of Ordinary Time C.  September 30, 2007.   Our Lady of Grace 5:15, 9:30. Amos 6:1a, 4-7.  I Timothy 6:11-16.  Luke 16:19-31.

Sometimes the best way to understand what Jesus is teaching us about a good and holy life is to be clear about what Jesus is not saying.   First of all Jesus is not saying that being rich is wrong or sinful.  Jesus is simply giving us a story to illustrate what we have already heard him say in the Gospel of Matthew: "Amen, I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  (Matthew 19: 23-24).   Jesus is not saying that it is wrong to be wealthy.  He is giving us a story that illustrates why being rich is a very unique challenge to those who are serous about following him.

Secondly, the story that Jesus tells us in today’s gospel does not say that the rich man went to hell because he did something wrong.  The situation illustrated in the Gospel makes it clear that the rich man went to hell, not because he did something, but because he did nothing.  Every time we pray the longer prayer for forgiveness during the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass we ask God to forgive us “for what we have done and for what we have failed to do.”   When I receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation there are always thoughts, words and actions that I need to confess as my sins, some of which I am very painfully conscious.   The hardest thing for us to put into words may well be the sins we have committed because we have thought nothing and done nothing.   Not seeing, not doing and not hearing are also sins.  Sometimes doing nothing is a sin worthy of hell.

Doing nothing is the situation addressed by the Prophet Amos in out first reading. “Woe to the complacent, the unworried and the content among God’s people.  They rest on beds of ivory stretched comfortably on their couches…they eat well and listen to music on the harp, but they are not made ill by the collapse of their brothers and sisters in the north!”   God’s people had been divided into the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel.   When the northern kingdom fell to the enemies of the Jewish people, the people of the southern kingdom were too busy enjoying wealth and prosperity to even notice.  In condemnation of their blindness God said, “Therefore, they shall be the first to go into exile.  They will be the first to lose their land.  Their wonton revelry shall be done away with and turned into a virtual hell.”

The sin that Jesus is condemning in today’s Gospel is the false sense of security that contentment, prosperity and wealth can create.  The sin that Jesus is condemning is the spiritual blindness of the rich man who doesn’t even notice the poor man covered with sores who is lying at his door.  The danger of prosperity and wealth is that we no longer see the world around us realistically, at the same time that the very foundation for our prosperity crumbles among the poor living right outside our doorway.  At the height of the French Revolution the poor rose up against the wealthy and had the king and queen of France beheaded by the guillotine. Queen Marie-Antoinette is often quoted as having said, “If the poor do not have any bread, then let them eat cake.”   While Marie-Antoinette was probably not the evil lady that her executioners made her out to be, nor did she utter the quote attributed to her, the fact remains that being blind to the poor and needy around us is dangerous business both in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of God.

We are a prosperous parish in a prosperous country.  We have been greatly blessed.  Being blessed with wealth and prosperity is not a sin. Being blind to the poor and doing nothing about human need is destructive to our relationship with the human community and to our relationship with God.  Jesus teaches us this lesson very clearly today.  Each year we send our teens on mission trips to help them grow in awareness of the poor and the needy and to help them reflect on what God expects of them because of the blessings they have received.  I would like to invite one of our teens to say a few words to us at this time.  

In gratitude for eyes that seek to see as God sees we give God thanks and praise.