The apostle Paul asks us to look at our life experience as a “good fight of faith” which takes place under the watchful eye of the only one who “possesses immortality and inhabits an inaccessible light”. It seems that that door so hermetically closed behind which the unnamed “rich” lives unaware has transformed that house with “lavish banquets” into a place of terrible loneliness and sad darkness. Lazarus, poor and wounded, enjoys the company of the “dogs” during his life and the familiarity of the saints in death. Perhaps what the Lord wants to warn us against with this parable is not to be too “thoughtless” like those to whom the word of the prophet is addressed. After his death that rich man becomes very thoughtful and even worries about his “five brothers”, a beautiful sign of repentance and conversion on which Jesus seems to fly over to reiterate the urgency to give thought to that “seventh brother” right away. who always lies at the door of our heart and waits for us to take thought of him. Certainly the theme of hell is no longer so much of “fashion” and, thank God, all the traditional anecdotal about this place of torments (Lk 15, 23), described with disturbing and revealing particularisms of a fervent as a risky fantasy, it has given way to a greater austerity of images to the advantage of a deeper sensitivity of the stakes. And the stakes are very high: the risk is to fail one’s life in time and in eternity. This sense of failure and this awareness of having wasted one’s big opportunity is the feeling that burns and consumes that poor rich man.

Commentary by b. Michael David, osb Novalesa Abbey

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey