Made Alive by Mercy
Jesus and sinners
Announcements for September 24, 2022:
If you need anything at all, please be in touch with me.
Trail Life Troop 514 is hosting an open-house meeting for new and returning families in Gordon Hall this Sunday after the 11:00am Mass. Trail Life is open to boys in grades K-8. Join us to learn about our Christ-centered adventure program!
Men's Group next meets the morning of Saturday, October 1st. Send me a note for more information.
Save the date! The 2022 Annual Gala Cocktail Reception will be held at the Birchwood Manor in Whippany on November 19th. Visit www.olmc.academy to buy tickets, become a sponsor, or purchase an ad.
Visit the OLMC Parishioner Portal for all of our recent announcements.
Dear Saints,
The Gospel passage we hear proclaimed this weekend contains the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. If you don't remember the story, perhaps this snippet will help your recollection:
And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.
That last, little, all-too-graphic description is extreme poverty of the sort we rarely encounter. If it is shocking, good. Jesus intends it to be.
The Rich Man and the Poor Lazarus
Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1625
Jesus frequently uses parables (e.g. The Parable of the Prodigal Son and The Parable of the Unjust Steward) to call his opponents to repentance. When we see a rich man in the wrong, then, we are bound to see in him an image of the Pharisees.
As the rich man dined sumptuously each day and left Lazarus with nothing, so the Pharisees left "sinners" on their doorsteps starved for the things of God, hungry for the smallest fragment of his compassionate love.
Jesus' parable is part and parcel of his kingdom-of-God proclamation, his mission to turn the world right-side up, the movement by which God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty handed (cf. Luke 1.53). In Jesus, Lazarus is lifted up while the rich man languishes in a torment of his own making.
What's going on? What's at the heart of this story? In a word (supposedly CS Lewis' word), "Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live." By God's mercy - by a love that overcomes unworthiness - Jesus is raising to new life those who were otherwise separated from God, left for dead in their dysfunction.
When, at the call of Christ, we are made alive by God's mercy - when Love becomes our lifeblood - we long for others to come to life and share our joy. We are not the rich man, stingy with what God gives and envious of God's generosity. Rather, we make it our life's mission to embody God's enlivening love for everyone we encounter.
For whom will you be an expression of God's merciful love this week?
I love you, my friends. Please know of my prayers for you and yours.
Christ's Peace,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ
Preparing for Mass?
Check out this weekend's readings:
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
From Lazarus and Dives
Codex Aureus of Echternach, 11th Century