BLESSED WITH CHANGE & CHANGEABILITY
(Saturday, October 21)
“…But Abraham said (to the rich man), ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’” (Lk 16:25-26)
Our capacity “to pass” from darkness to light will be suspended in the afterlife, where there will not be time (and space) as we know them here. This is why the “fallen” angels appear stuck in their darkness, although some have thought that God will find some way back for them, in the fulfilment or eschaton. But here on earth, we are blessed with the change and changeability of time and of our physical bodies, which empower us to move and to change. “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often,” as John Henry Newman famously said. We are called consistently to enter into the “pascha” or *Passover* of our Lord Jesus Christ, from darkness to light and from death to new life, in our daily work of changing course when we have lost focus; of replacing fear with faith, resentment with forgiveness, and self-isolation with communion.
Here we are gifted with hunger and thirst, both physical and spiritual, which compel us to move and to seek what or whom we are lacking. The tragedy of “the rich man” in the above-quoted Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is that he apparently became complacent in his affluence, as if he had everything and everyone he needed. So, he did not notice the beggar Lazarus at his gate, nor his own, spiritual emptiness. Physically, the rich man was completely satisfied, while Lazarus experienced hunger and thirst. This state of affairs did not necessarily mean that both men would end up as they did, the rich one in hell and the beggar in the bosom of Abraham. But as it happened, Lazarus evidently harnessed his hunger and thirst to seek fulfilment beyond this world that gave him nothing, while the rich man misused his gifts through self-centeredness, which stopped him from moving or growing beyond himself into service to the “others.”
Today let me get moving, if I have slipped into self-centeredness, and let me be a bit more attentive to my own emptiness, and to any “others” that may appreciate my attention. Lord, help us move from darkness to light this Saturday, as we once again prepare to celebrate your “Pascha” or resurrection tomorrow, on Sunday.
