Tomorrow’s Gospel is about Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31). In 2020 during the Covid Pandemic, Pope Francis spoke to us about this Parable. His words are even more needed today —
Let’s consider a big obstacle to change, the existential myopia that allows us defensively to select what we see. Existential myopia is always about holding on to something we’re afraid to let go of. Covid had unmasked the other pandemic, the virus of indifference, which is the result of constantly looking away, telling ourselves that because there is no immediate or magic solution, it is better to feel nothing.
We see it in the story of the poor man Lazarus in Luke’s Gospel. The rich man was his neighbor; he knew perfectly well who Lazarus was – even his name. But he was indifferent, he didn’t care. To the rich man, Lazarus’s misfortune was his own affair. He probably said “Poor thing!” every time he passed him at the gate, peering at him over an abyss of indifference.
He knew Lazarus’s life but he didn’t let it affect him. This is what ends up creating a breach between the indifference that we feel on the one hand and other thoughts on the other. Hence people judge situations without empathy, without any ability to walk for a time in the other’s shoes.
I saw a photograph exhibition here in Rome. One of the photos was called just that: Indifference. A lady is leaving a restaurant in winter, well wrapped up against the cold: leather coat, hat, gloves, all the apparel of the well-to-do. At the door of the restaurant a woman is seated on a crate, poorly dressed, shivering in the street, holding out her hand to the lady who looks elsewhere. That photo touched a lot of people.
Here in Italy you often hear people say che me ne frega when you have a problem. It means “So what? What’s it got to do with me?” In Argentina we say: y a mi que? They’re little words that reveal a mindset. Some Italians claim you need a healthy dose of menefreghismo – “so-whatism” – to get through life, because if you start worrying about what you see, how are you ever going to relax?
This attitude ends up armor-plating the soul; that is, indifference bulletproofs it, so that certain things just bounce off. One of the dangers of this indifference is that it can become normal, silently seeping into our lifestyles and value judgements. We cannot get used to indifference.
The attitude of the Lord is completely different, at the opposite pole. God is never indifferent. The essence of God is mercy, which is not just seeing and being moved but responding with action. God knows, feels, and comes running out to look for us. God doesn’t just wait. Whenever in the world you have a response that is immediate, close, warm, and concerned, offering a response, that’s where God’s Spirit is present.
Indifference blocks the Spirit by closing us to the possibilities that God is waiting to offer us, possibilities that overflow our mental schemes and categories. Indifference doesn’t let you feel the motions of the Spirit that this crisis must provoke in our hearts. It blocks the chance of discernment. The indifferent person is closed to the new things that God is offering us.
That’s why we must become aware of this so-whatism and open ourselves to the blows that reach us now from every corner of the globe.
When this happens, we are flooded by doubts and questions: How to respond? What can we do? How can I help? What is God asking of us at this time?
And in asking these questions – not rhetorically, but silently with attentive hearts, perhaps before a lit candle – we open ourselves to the action of the Spirit. We can start to discern, to see new possibilities, at least in the little things that surround us, or that we do each day.
And then, as we commit to those small things, we start to imagine another way of living together, of serving our fellow-beloved creatures. We can begin to dream of real change, change that is possible.
By Pope Francis, from Let Us Dream, The Path to a Better Future
When YOU are flooded by doubts and questions, do YOU open YOURSELF to the action of the Spirit to see new possibilities with some of the things YOU do each day?
EACH OF US WILL EVENTUALLY GIVE AWAY ALL OF OUR POSSESSIONS. HOW YOU CHOOSE TO DO SO, HOWEVER, IS A REFLECTION OF YOUR COMMITMENT TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD!
