Jeff Runyan, a lay Catholic missionary, tells this story. He was part of a church tour in Guatemala. The group was out sightseeing ancient ruins. The tour organizers brought lunch for those on the tour. As they stopped to eat their lunch, some children who were selling corn husk dolls waited nearby. The children had been trying to sell their wares all morning, and, well, the tourists were not interested. Toward the end of lunch, however, a woman at the end of the table closest to the children offered some leftover part of her lunch to a child nearby. The child ate it as if she had not eaten in days. Surprised and now aware, everyone on the tour began to pass their food to the lady at the end of the table who passed it on to the children.
Poverty of Perspective
Jeff reports that the incident had a transformative effect on him. From it he realized a poverty within himself he had never seen before: he had a poverty of perspective. He had seen the children as part of the scene and culture of Guatemala. He had not seen them as hungry children, making and selling corn husk dolls so they and their families could eat. He had not seen them as what God might want him to learn in Guatemala.
Jeff ties this story with today’s Gospel. There are some interesting details in this Gospel. As Jesus tells the story, there is no indication that the rich man was generally a bad person. In the story, his only sin is IGNORING the poor man Lazarus at his door. He doesn’t seem to see him or his need. That’s all. Likewise, there is no indication in the story that Lazarus is especially virtuous. All we know is that since he experienced bad things in this life, God let him spend eternity in the “bosom of Abraham.”
Poverty of Perspective and the Cultures of Life and Death
As part of my work with Carebound, I have been reading Saint Pope John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel of Life. I am in love with Chapter Two. This chapter is the story of salvation told from the perspective of God’s desire to bring both quality life here on earth and eternal life to ALL the world. It is a beautiful rendition of the kerygma, God’s plan of salvation. Saint Pope John Paul II gave us the terms “culture of death” and “culture of life.” Evangelium Vitae is his instruction of how to live in the culture of life instead of the culture of death.
As you may have noticed, the scripture readings during Lent do not follow a chronology of various books of the Bible like the readings in Ordinary Time do. Instead, the sequence gives us opportunities to see Truth in our lives around the themes of the common sins of humanity in contrast with God’s loving plan for salvation . This week’s theme seems to be awareness of our tendency to ignore what we do not want to see. We do live in a culture of death in the modern world. The theme of ANY night’s daily news is not, “I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10) The focus of our news is trouble, evil, and, yes, death.
We grow tired of it and, well, I turn it off. I tell myself, “These are stories I can do nothing about. Why hear them?” Or I quickly grow impatient with political pundits and chess games with history. Yet this news of the culture of death tags along with us—like the children selling cornhusk dolls in Jeff’s story.
I ignore it—like the rich man ignored Lazarus at his door.
Now, true, I wouldn’t ignore someone camping out on my front porch.
In My Neighborhood
But what about down the street? Yesterday I heard two stories of family troubles visible for the neighbors to see. One included police cars called to the house. As people told me the stories, they both told of being aware from neighbors’ behavior and comments that people KNEW about their family troubles. But they did not say that people in any way helped. Instead they said that people knowing only added a layer of shame.
I can recall some instances when I did intervene or help with neighbor troubles, but….
We are doing some visiting of elders in our parish we aren’t seeing regularly. Now I go out visiting regularly, but one of the names given us as someone who is having a hard time right now…lives on my street. I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen.
Now there is no malice in my ignoring, in my not knowing, in my not doing. There isn’t any belief or attachment to the culture of death.
I just didn’t paid attention.
Like the rich man in the story today.
A Deeper, Richer View
I am also reading Jean Vanier’s The Broken Body: Journey to Wholeness. In many ways it is a poetic presentation of the same concepts in Evangelium Vitae and the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Vanier is the founder of l’Arche, a community model where severely mentally challenged and ordinary people live together.
Vanier says,
“At l’Arche we might have come to serve the poor, but we will only stay if we discover that we are the poor, and that Jesus came to announce the good news, not to those who serve the poor, but to those who are poor! It is the broken ones who lead us to our brokenness, and to the knowledge that we need a healing savior. Thus they lead us to Jesus, to healing, to wholeness, to resurrection. These two experiences–of gentle communion and of pain and darkness–lead us thus, little by little, into covenant: covenant with Jesus, covenant with the poor.” (p 94)
This is the learning for me from the Gospel today. Yes, I need to pay attention to the needs around me and befriend the neighbor who needs visiting, the family whose house is visited by the police from time to time, and anyone who parks themselves on my porch. I need to be aware of the news and take an interest—be it calling Congressmen about the plight of the Dreamers or praying at an abortion clinic as part of 40 Days for Life or cooking for a local senior residence.
But those are all ways that I, the richer, serve the poor. More important for my life in Christ is what I learn from each of those experiences—how I let the poor serve me. When we have most everything we need it is very easy to have a poverty of perspective AND NOT EVEN KNOW IT.
One Way to Gain Perspective
How can I gain perspective? For me the solution is practical, appreciative empathy: When someone tells me a story or I experience someone whom I think I might be serving, to stop and put myself in their shoes and heart as they talk to me. To stop listening with an idea of “fixing” and instead to listen to appreciate the beauty, the pain, the goodness, the darkness, the struggle between goodness and evil, the strength—the image of God—in the person I am with. When I take the time to do that, I discover my poverty and their riches. I see it. I taste it. I hunger in it.
I, too, become poor. And blessed.
“Blessed are you poor, yours is the kingdom of God.” (Luke 6:20)
Prayer:
Lord, in today’s first reading, you say,
“More tortuous than all else is the human heart,
beyond remedy; who can understand it?
I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
and test the heart,
To reward everyone according to his ways,
according to the merit of his deeds.”
It is so easy to see myself as one who serves the poor, instead of one who is served by the poor. I see now that is because I resist letting myself be served by those in need—being one with them. That means being hidden, weak, ignored, lonely, less able, less, less, less. O Lord, I resist less, less, less, less! I resist this different kind of poverty. Yet I do see the riches in it. I see it is potentially transformative. It calls to me. I am resisting—focusing on other matters. Yet you call me, Lord, to let myself be transformed, to live the Gospel of Life from the middle of the troubles of my Carebound friends. Give me grace, Lord, to let go, to FULLY let go. And teach me what Vanier means by entering into covenant with you and them. That intrigues me, today, Lord. Lead me, guide me.
Note: I heard Jeff Runyan’s story on an audio file from the Augustine Institute’s website as part of my parish’s free trial of access to their services. The title of his presentation was SEEK 2017, The Two Great Poverties. I can’t give you access to the presentation, but this will get you to the Augustine Institute’s website.
Quote from Vanier source: Jean Vanier. The Broken Body: Journey to Wholeness. Paulist Press, 1988, p 94.
