Lazarus's Neighbors

“Good fences make good neighbors.” You might recognize that statement if you are familiar with the work of the American poet Robert Frost. It’s from one of his more famous poems, “Mending Wall.” In the context of the poem, it is the saying of a New England landowner who explains why he’s performing the hard labor of repairing a stone wall that separates his property from others. He wants to rebuild the wall because, in his words, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

There is a kind of logic to that point of view that our society recognizes as well. We usually don’t like to meddle in the affairs of other people, and we certainly don’t like it when they meddle in ours. We have a sort of built-in mentality of “Don’t bother me and I won’t bother you.” Good fences make good neighbors.

The problem, as we all know, is that this can be taken too far. Sometimes we need others to be invested in our well-being, even if it invades our privacy. If our house is on fire and we’re not home, we don’t want our neighbors to say, “Oh well, you know, I didn’t call the fire department because it’s not my house, I didn’t want to get involved in someone else’s business.” And it goes the other way, too. We have the obligation to get involved in the affairs of others when a true emergency is present.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that the well-being of the poor is just that kind of emergency — it’s a spiritual house on fire, and the hydrant and firehose are within our reach. The great sin of the rich man in Jesus’s parable – the sin that leads him to perdition – is not the fact that he is wealthy, but that he doesn’t use any of his wealth to aid the man who was so clearly in need at his doorstep. We can think of all kinds of reasons that the rich man might have had for not helping – “I don’t really want to get involved”; “Lazarus, I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry, I don’t have time right now”; “Lazarus, can’t you just get a job, for crying out loud?”; “Lazarus, how do I know that you won’t use what I give you for booze or drugs?” But none of these reasons, in the end, justify the fact that the rich man failed to help someone whom he *could* have helped, who was in such dire need.

The Rich Man and Poor Lazarus (1625) by Hendrick ter Brugghen

The implication, I think, is obvious for us. Helping the needy and the poor might take us out of our comfort zone, and we might be tempted not to help because of all kinds of What-Ifs that might come to mind. But Jesus is telling us today that the well-being of the poor has a direct impact on our eternal well-being, so it’s best to use our dishonest wealth now — that is, our money, to use a phrase from last week’s Gospel — in order to build up treasure in heaven.

Now, I know many of us might say: "Father, my situation is not exactly that of the rich man's. Things are hard for me." But wherever we may find ourselves on the economic scale, I think we can all admit that there's someone who is in an even more challenging situation. What this Gospel should prompt within each of us is an examination of conscience about who is within our reach that is need of our help. Maybe it’s a neighbor who is going through a difficult stretch after losing a job. Maybe it’s those folks we see standing on street corners and red lights asking for a little help. Maybe it’s those in our community that we’ve never met, but whose needs are known to us, that we can alleviate through supporting a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, a pregnancy resource center, a halfway house.

And lest we think otherwise, it’s not only those close to home that we must have concern for. Today is the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, an annual reminder as Catholics that we also are to help vulnerable persons who have been displaced from their homelands because of famine, violence, or economic hardship. As citizens of a global society, and as members of the Body of Christ spread throughout the world, we have a duty to know about and help even those far away from us whom we may never meet personally. I’d encourage you to consider learning more about how you can help migrants and refugees through the work of groups like Catholic Relief Services, Jesuit Refugee Services, or the International Catholic Migration Commission.

Friends, perhaps it feels a little overwhelming to think of all these systemic problems like homelessness or a global refugee crisis. But the point today is that we don’t have to solve those issues in order to still help the individual people that are within our reach. What makes good neighbors, in the end, is not good fences, but just being good neighbors to the Lazarus's among us – having concern for the well-being of others and doing what we can to help those clearly in need. As we prepare for this Eucharist, may the Lord Jesus be our model in all these things – he who humbled himself to help us in our need, who submitted to the lowliness of the Cross in order to raise us to new and eternal life.