Our social soul

Today’s readings: Amos 6, 1.4-7; 1 Timothy 6, 11-16; Luke 16, 19-31.

Today’s readings speak to us on the ethics of affluence. We badly need a clear authentic Christian voice that can speak to our deepest concerns in a world where economic imbalances between peoples are still the order of the day.

In an age of unprecedented increasing wealth, when questions about how prosperity should be used are issues of life and death for entire peoples, it is of utmost importance to see how we might respond.

This topic regularly surfaces in our debates, particularly because we are all at some point or other struck by poverty.

The prophet Amos refers to “the ruin of Israel” both because it was about to be conquered by the Assyrians and because by then it had totally lost its characteristics. We speak a lot about social cohesion. But we should first consider our social soul which opens us to people’s real and basic needs.

The Gospel also takes up this theme, but opens up to yet deeper insights on the impact faith can have on these concerns. In another sense, St Paul defines it as “the good fight of faith”, the struggle of connecting our faith in a just and good God with the social concerns of brothers and sisters who lack the basics.

In the light of the Gospel reading, our being rich or poor is not just a sociological reading of our economic condition. It is more indicative of a determined behaviour with regard to God, the permanent danger of affluent societies becoming fertile ground for hedonism and a godless culture.

In the parable of the rich and poor men, which lends itself to an eschatological scenario, the Gospel reproposes the simple dramatic reversal of fortunes, which up to some time ago was purely logical and reasonable in our way of envisaging life after death in terms of reward and punishment.

But as it unfolds, the parable complicates what may otherwise announce itself as a simple story. It refers to that aspect of our faith which, even in our times, continues to hold its ground. I refer to the craze of crowds so easily attracted in this day and age by spectacular or super-natural phenomena about which we hear from time to time and which shift our focus to an inward-looking faith.

Abraham’s response in the parable, “they have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them”, is actually a warning to all the churches to re-examine the methods we use to bring people to the faith.

In present-day culture, we as believers can consider many arguments literally lost if we pursue them argumentatively. Our politics of persuasion rest only in the patient listening to God’s Word.

What today seems so threatening is the fact that society itself has given birth to mechanisms which themselves perpetuate richness and poverty.

Faith cannot be simply translated into precise political options, but it surely helps to identify these mechanisms and empower people of good will to create alternatives. Faithfulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ demands of us and awakens in us the courage to stand up and be counted.

The scenarios described in today’s readings by Amos and in Luke’s parable are repeated in our cities, where luxurious hotels and expensive shopping outlets stand alongside filthy slum areas. Our eyes get used to people rummaging in garbage cans, making us ‘mentally blind’.

Oliver Sacks uses this phrase in one of his tales, To See and Not See, and for him it shows how much one is able to see without deciphering what one is seeing. And that is precisely what is happening to us.

God’s Word provides the eyes to see. Today’s readings are not to be taken from a moralistic viewpoint but rather from a prophetic perspective. Prophecy does not only stimulate feelings of compassion but raises awareness of our responsi­bilities, personal and social, towards the world, in particular where human dignity is trampled upon.