(Twenty sixth Sunday of the Year (C): This homily was given on September 27, 1998 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Luke 16: 19-31.)
"The rich man's sin: a serious sin of OMISSION."
This past Thursday night, in our teenagers' prayer-share group, we had a very lively discussion about the president and the current goings-on in Washington, D. C. And I must say, the 40 or so young people who were present had some marvelous insights on the matter. Believe me, many of the adults in this country who participate in these news polls could take a few lessons from some of our teens. Anyway, as I was preparing for this homily, I recalled one particular exchange that occurred during the discussion. A young girl raised her hand and said, "I think it's important for us to remember that the president did these things; we didn't. We're not the ones responsible." Well immediately a young man put up his hand and said, "Yes, that's true--he's the one who committed adultery and lied about it under oath. But now that the truth has been revealed, if our legislators don't hold Mr. Clinton accountable for his actions, if they don't impose on him an appropriate punishment, then THEY will also be responsible: they'll be responsible before God for condoning the evil that he did."
Although he didn't realize it at the time, this young man was actually taking the message of today's gospel text from Luke 16, and applying it to something in his experience--which is precisely what we should always do whenever we listen to the Word of God: we should take the message we hear and try to apply it to the concrete, ordinary, everyday circumstances of our lives. And what is the message of this parable concerning the rich man and Lazarus? Is Jesus simply reminding us here that we've got to reach out to the poor and less fortunate? Is that the extent of his message? NO! It goes much deeper than that. Jesus is telling us here that we must learn to recognize and avoid ALL SINS OF OMISSION--including the sin of failing to help the poor. And that's a tall order--because sins of omission are very easy for us to ignore or rationalize away. In fact--I must tell you--I very rarely hear sins of this type confessed in the sacrament of Reconciliation. That's an indication of how difficult they can be to identify. Now, just in case anyone isn't clear on the distinction between sins of omission and sins of commission: sins of commission are committed whenever we perform an EVIL action that we know we should avoid: when we steal, when we lie, when we cheat, when we curse, etc. Sins of omission, on the other hand, are committed whenever we FAIL to do something GOOD that we know we should do. Think, for example, about the rich man in this story: he certainly didn't commit a sin of commission--that's not why he ended up in hell. He didn't beat up Lazarus; he didn't kill him; he didn't viciously slander the beggar or have an affair with his wife. His sin was a serious sin of OMISSION: he simply ignored Lazarus in his need. He didn't care. He could have used some of the material gifts that God had given him to help a suffering person lying at his doorstep--but he made the conscious and deliberate and cold-hearted decision to turn the other way. This, of course, is the same type of sin that that young man was alluding to last Thursday in our teenagers' prayer group. In effect he was saying, "Look, if our legislators fail to hold Mr. Clinton accountable for his actions, if they fail to impose on him an appropriate punishment, then they will be omitting justice! That means they will be responsible for committing a sin: a sin of omission."
At some point in our religious training, we hopefully all learned the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The corporal works of mercy are feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick and burying the dead. The spiritual works of mercy are correcting the sinner, instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful, bearing wrongs patiently, forgiving others and praying for the living and the dead. We commit a sin of omission whenever God wants us to do one of these GOOD things and we say, "No." Now most of the time, thankfully, it's probably only a venial sin; but in certain cases it can be mortal--as the rich man in this parable found out. For example, if I knew that a friend of mine was planning to have an abortion, or planning to cheat on her spouse, or planning to steal a lot of money, and I did nothing to try to dissuade the person from committing these sins because I didn't care--then I would be guilty of a SERIOUS sin of omission. But praise God, even a serious sin like this can be forgiven, if we have the good sense to bring it to Confession so that it can be washed away by the blood of Jesus.
The other day I was trying to imagine what the rich man's judgment was like. We know, of course, the result of that judgment, but the Bible tells us nothing about how he learned of his eternal sentence. Personally, I think it happened in this way: at the moment of his death, the rich man found himself standing before Jesus, who held out to him a picture of Lazarus--a picture of Lazarus lying in pain at the front gate of his home, the dogs licking his painful sores. And Jesus said to him, "Ecce homo--look at the man! Look at what YOU did!" The rich man answered, "But Lord, I didn't make him poor, I didn't give him those sores, I didn't attack him physically--FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, JESUS, I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!" And the Lord responded, "That's right. That's exactly right."