Thursday 12 March 2009

Background

Otherwise, the Darkess

I have a cause.
We need those, don't we?
Otherwise the darkness and the cold gets in
and everything starts to ache.
My soul has a purpose, it is to love:
if I do not fulfil my heart's vocation, 
I suffer.

St Thomas Aquinas (a Dominican monk, philosopherand theologian of the 13th century)

In biblical times, wealth was almost universally perceivedas a sign of blessing. God had approved. God had given. God hadmanipulated circumstances to favour those who found themselveswealthy. Even the inheritance of wealth was seen as a passing on ofa blessing poured out on a person's forebears, and seen to carryover into the lives of those who came after.

Those who were poor and who suffered were, on the whole,understood to have committed some offence against God. God hadshown displeasure by arranging their circumstances so that theywere left in no doubt about God's displeasure with them. Similarly,their circumstances may have resulted from the passing down from aprevious generation of God's displeasure. Inasmuch as people couldbe blessed because of their forebears, they could also becursed.

Against all this Jesus told stories: stories that underminedpeople's assumptions about the nature of God, and the nature andcauses of the state of their own lives, and the lives of others.This passage illustrates just such a story. It can be told, andread with a great deal of humour and irony that hold deep truthswithin.

Like many other stories, it placed compassion andrelationship at the centre of God's attention, and challenged verycleverly - by using Abraham as a central character - thefoundations of Jewish thought about blessing and causality.Abraham, the man with whom God had made God's initial covenant, isthe person in the story who reminds the rich man that God hasalready spoken clearly through Moses and the prophets. Nothing newis being said.

Compassion is the hallmark of a godly person. Generosity andresponsibility for others are some of the ways that compassion isshown.

To Ponder

What does it mean to you to say that you orothers are 'blessed'? What has brought about that blessing?

Who is the 'beggar at your gate'? Who around youis 'covered in sores'? Who needs your compassion?

What generosity is hardest for you to express?Money? Time? Attention? Another? Why?