In the way of virtue, there is no standing still;
anyone who does not daily advance, loses ground. To remain at a standstill is impossible; he that gains not, loses; she that ascends not, descends. If one does not ascend the ladder, one must descend; if one does not conquer, one will be conquered.
… St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) (Which way do you think
you’ve been going, lately?)
|
Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6 Luke 16:19-31 Jesus said to the Pharisees: ‘There was a rich man who used to dress in purple and fine linen and feast
magnificently every day. And at his gate there lay a poor man called Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to fill himself with the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even came and licked his sores. Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.
‘In his torment in Hades he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off with Lazarus in his bosom. So he cried out,
“Father Abraham, pity me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.” “My son,” Abraham replied “remember that during your life good things came your way, just as bad things came the way of Lazarus. Now he is being comforted here while you are in agony. But that is not all: between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, to stop anyone, if he wanted to, crossing from our side to yours, and to stop any crossing from your side to
ours.”
‘The rich man replied, “Father, I beg you then to send Lazarus to my father’s house, since I have five brothers, to give them warning so that they do not come to this place of torment too.” “They have Moses and the prophets,” said Abraham “let them listen to them.” “Ah no, father Abraham,” said the rich man “but if someone comes to them from the dead, they will repent.” Then Abraham said to him, “If they will not listen either to Moses or to
the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”’
Reflection on the Scriptures
For Luke’s Rich Man, the road to hell is paved in heartlessness. Despite the persistent calls of Israel’s prophets to care for the widow, orphan, alien, and the poor, the Rich Man has “dined sumptuously each day”
with no regard for the Lazarus who lays at his door. His heart is “turned away from the Lord,” as Jeremiah cries out in the first reading, precisely because he disregards the immediate needs of his neighbor in need. He has failed to bother to love. We are well into the second week of Lent. The luster of Ash Wednesday may be dimming, and with it our
steadfast commitments to fasting, prayer, and tithing. But let us not forget the clarion call of that first day of Lent, namely the Prophet Joel’s cry to “rend our hearts, not our garments.” In receiving Christ’s love for me, from what do I need to repent? What do I need to let go of? Which Lazarus do I need to see? And how am I called to mediate the Sacred Heart of Jesus to a suffering world, especially the marginalized neighbor at my door? -by Jay Carney
The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, by James Arraj
https://innerexplorations.com/catchtheomor/resurrecion.htm Inner Growth Publications, 2007.
Chapter 4: The Resurrection of Jesus Visions and the Resurrection Phillip Wiebe in Visions of Jesus allows us to continue this kind of inquiry by letting us ask how modern visions of Christ compare to the resurrection narratives. Wiebe placed advertisements in newspapers and magazines
asking people to contact him who had had a “direct visual encounter with Jesus Christ.”37 While he admits that the result is no scientific sample, it is fascinating none-the-less. His study deals principally with 28 cases, most of which leave the impression that the recipients of these visions were honestly trying to tell him what happened, and the result is often moving. While Wiebe divides his cases into five categories, what is most relevant for our inquiry is that almost all of them appear to deal with what could be called imaginative visions, which is not a prejudicial way of saying that the visions were unreal or made up, but rather, experienced only by the person receiving it
without intersubjective repercussions. If this is true – and here we are departing from Wiebe’s own analysis – then they would be different from the resurrection stories in which the encounters with Jesus are taken to be outer objective events often experienced by more than one person. In the visions that Wiebe reports, the figure of Jesus most often bears the marks of subjective perception. The recipients of these visions often recognized Jesus, but didn’t understand why they made that
identification, and they experienced a deep sense of love and compassion expressed in his eyes. The figure of Jesus starts off, for example, as an outline. The face is not seen, or is partially seen, or the figure is partially hidden or indistinct, or the body or the face of Jesus is oversized, or is transparent, or the placement of the body was, in fact, impossible in real space and time, or did not move. And even though in many of the experiences there were other people around, these people
did not see Jesus.
|
|
