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Author’s Note: Three years ago this month, I posted this tribute to Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez. I share it again today with much gratitude and love to “the little priest with the accent,” as my son called him, during our years at the University Notre Dame (2003-2007). For your beautiful life and work, Fr. Gustavo, and for your ongoing commitment to theology in service of the people of God, thank you.
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In one of his most vividly detailed parables, Jesus tells the story of a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus who lay hungry and sick outside the rich man’s door, longing for the scraps that fell from the man’s table. The rich man never once acknowledges the presence of Lazarus, not until, that is, their situation is reversed, and the once-rich man finds himself in torment. “Father Abraham, please send Lazarus from heaven, so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue from these flames.” (Lk: 16:19-31)
Abraham’s reply should send shivers through us all. Notice that the “great chasm” separating Lazarus and the rich man is not new, not a barrier established by God in the afterlife, but a yawning chasm already present “here below,” and established precisely by the rich man’s wanton indifference to his suffering brother.
My child, remember that you received
what was good during your lifetime
while Lazarus likewise received what was bad;
but now he is comforted here,
whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you
a great chasm is established
to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go
from our side to yours or from your side to ours.
Jesus, in issuing this vivid warning to the blindly comfortable, stands squarely with the prophets of Israel who never tire of reminding us of God’s preferential concern for the poor. If there is a barrier separating us from the poor, it is there by our own design, say the prophets, by our willful refusal to see and to act on their behalf. It is there by our own terrible indifference.
“Mind the gap!” say the prophets, for your brothers and sisters are suffering terribly, and one day, God forbid, you “and your kind” may suddenly find yourself in similar need.
In other words, the poverty of Lazarus and his innumerable children is our poverty. From God’s perspective, our riches are his riches too, his inheritance, since all good things come to us not by our own hand but by God’s overflowing generosity.
For those of us who, by all reasonable measures, are the “rich” in Jesus’ parable, “stretched comfortably on our couches”—see today’s first reading, Amos 6:1, 4-7—to what extent have our wealth and privilege made us stubbornly blind, and politically indifferent, to the suffering of our neighbors both near and far? Are we not like the Levite on the road to Jericho, passing by the wounded man in the ditch with our nose in the air?
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