Grace of Compassion
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28 September 1986
Paris, France

My dear Sisters,

Some time during the past year a Confrere of mine, who was working in a Third World country, told me how difficult he found it to explain to a group of young men that he had a vow of poverty. He told the group that he had little personal money and that he had left his own country, which was more comfortable, in order to come and live among them, who were poor. My Confrere failed to convince them that he was poor. "And why," he asked them, "do you say that I am rich?" There was silence for a moment, and then one of the young men said: "You have shoes and you have a watch."

To these young men a missionary of St. Vincent was seen to be Dives, simply because he had shoes and a watch. Now it is not very comforting nor consoling to think that perhaps more than two-thirds of the world would consider me to be a Dives today. But that is how I must seem to the starving millions who must lie down at night, gnawed by hunger. When on plane journeys the food I am served is not to my liking and I leave it there to be taken away, I find myself often reflecting on the fact that some of the families living in the territory over which I am flying would find enough to keep them going for a day, from what I leave on my plate to be thrown out by the airline companies. There are many Lazaruses who would like to get what I leave, to eat the crumbs that fall from my table.

Is there any difference, then, between the Dives of today's Gospel and myself? Can I avoid the fate of Dives? Must we say that it was the fact of being rich that condemned Dives? Or what precisely was Dives' sin for which he received such a severe sentence?

Dives' sin was not one of commission, but rather of omission. Dives did not commit any sin of violence: he did not attack Lazarus. Indeed he seemed to have allowed him to sit on his doorstep. Dives was a tolerant man. The sin of Dives seems to have been his failure to notice Lazarus with the ulcers on his body. Or if Dives did notice the pitiable condition of Lazarus, he did not lift a finger to help him. Lazarus was, according to the parable, in need both of food and medical attention, and Dives did nothing. Dives seems not to have had an eye for the poverty of Lazarus' condition nor a heart for his suffering.

We, of St. Vincent's Communities, profess to have both an eye and a heart for the suffering poor. We profess and proclaim to show the effective compassion of Jesus Christ towards those who are Lazarus in today's world. To have an eye and a heart of compassion for the poor is a grace of Jesus Christ. We cannot turn on the compassion of Jesus Christ, as we would water from a tap. We must humbly ask that grace of compassion from Jesus Christ.

There is one other grace which today's parable would suggest. Dives was condemned because he neglected to show effective compassion for Lazarus who sat at his door. Lazarus could hardly get closer to Dives, yet he received nothing from him. We who live in Community can never forget that the first person who has claim on our compassion and love is the person on our own doorsteps. Who knows if Dives might not have been very kind to poor people who lived far away from his house. The fact is that he was condemned for neglecting Lazarus on his doorstep.

Today's parable says something to me about the importance of the world of personal suffering in which my own local community members may be living. The Charity of Christ presses us to alleviate their sufferings before I leave the house to serve the poor and after I have returned to it. "Be charitable," exhorts St. Vincent, "be kind, have the spirit of forbearance and God will abide in your midst; you will be His cloisters, you will have Him in your home, you will have Him in your hearts." (Conf. Eng. ed., 22 Oct. 1646, p. 259).

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