Here is my homily from this morning. God bless!
There are a lot of Lazaruses in our lives. Lots of people whom we pass by, unaware of their presence and their needs. There are a lot of people we exclude from our awareness and from our lives and our Church.
We have to be careful not to exclude by not paying attention to them. In so many ways, in the manner of his life and with his words, our Holy Father Pope Francis has brought this to our attention in the past two years. We must not be self-absorbed, self-focused, closed in on ourselves. We must not be that way as individuals; we must not be that way as a Church. Rather, we are to be inclusive by reaching out to all people in their need and bringing them into our lives and our Church, first by our awareness and attention then by our service to them in their need.
My people, there are a lot of Lazaruses out there in our local community. Many people who are homeless, hungry, struggling, trying to believe. We must not walk by them blindly. We must not ignore them through our self-concern. We must not exclude them by our blindness and inattention. If we do, we will become tormented as that rich man was tormented in the Gospel this morning.
The great unbridgeable divide of which our Lord speaks this morning, the chasm between the rich man and Lazarus, must not exist here on this earth, now during our terrestial life. It exists only in the afterlife and confirms forever that reality that we create for ourselves here on earth, if that truly is what we create. Let us not risk experiencing eternally such torment by our exclusion of others now.
