Hidden Relations and Bridging the Chasm

In His terrifying parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Lord Jesus affirms in the strongest terms that our lives are interconnected in mysterious ways for which we shall ultimately be held to account.  The drama of the parable seems to turn on two lives unknown to each other---one partially and inculpably, the other entirely and damnably.  Lazarus knows at least enough about the Rich Man to beg (albeit unsuccessfully) for the scraps of his table.  The Rich Man, by contrast, even in judgment can only conceive of Lazarus as a mere factotum at the disposal of the wealthy family’s benefit.  But upon further consideration, the tensile center of the parable is actually the “great chasm” which Abraham describes as existing to “prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.”  It is precisely this separation which Christ uses to stir the agony of conversion to communion in our hearts.

To be in ill health like Lazarus is to have involuntarily crossed a chasm separating the sick from the visibly healthy.  The separation can, of course, take many forms---from one’s ordinary routines and one’s home (being stuck in an unfamiliar place such as, for example, a hospital in another state)--- extending as far as the excruciatingly painful absence of one’s friends or even anyone to help.

During my time away from Queen of Peace preparing for and recovering from surgery in Florida, I did feel at times the abysmal depths of the “chasm” separating me from my whole life prior to jaw pain.  But my situation also prompted me to wonder about other people’s lives:  I pondered all of the people who suffer from jaw problems; all of the people who came to the Piper Clinic before me for help; all of the people who were “worked on” in my operating room (before totally going under anesthesia, I remember thinking that the tiles on the walls of that room looked about fifty years old!); all of the patients who had been assigned to my hospital room and walked the halls after surgery like I had to do, etc.

My thoughts also often turned to what everyone I knew at home was doing---who was gathering for Lauds in church at Queen of Peace before daily Mass; what was taking place during each hour of the Sunday liturgies at the Parish, etc.  And I also frequently thought of and prayed for Bishop D’Arcy, because I knew----due to his recent diagnosis of brain and lung cancer---that his time on earth was short.  Before I left for Florida, he had sent me a multiple page letter thanking me for my ministry and our friendship.  (I had been able to phone him, too, before leaving; all I kept saying to him throughout our conversation was “I love you.”)  Several days into my convalescence at the Garatoni home---on February 3 just after I had finished my “private” Mass including Bishop D’Arcy in my prayer, the Church’s prayer---I walked downstairs to find an e-mail on the computer that the man who had ordained me had died that very morning.

To describe that experience as a “chasm” is to say too little and too much---too little, because the fact of his death only gradually hit me (and still, I must admit, it hasn’t quite fully penetrated); too much, because I instantly was overcome with the grace of his life and how deeply he belonged to Christ and His eternal promises.  But the event got me thinking even more about how each of our lives does run on mysteriously intersecting tracks and unique timetables.  As my strength was returning to normal, Bishop D’Arcy’s was ebbing away.  As I lived that day, he had died that day---all in the Lord’s wise and loving providence.

The secret that Jesus hides in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is that He Himself is the Risen Bridge spanning the chasm between rich and poor, sick and well, sinner and saint, alive and dead.  Moreover, Christ chooses to constitute the membership of His Mystical Body through time as the living spanning of the distance between the Church and the world, even as He overcomes in us the separation between Heaven and earth.  Thus we in the Church are taught to pray: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”.

The word in Latin for “bridge-builder” is “pontifex.”  The Holy Father is called the Roman Pontiff because Christ chose St. Peter and his successors to administer in sacrificial service the sacramental solution to the tragedy of the Rich Man and Lazarus:  The Keys of the Kingdom are given to the Servant of the Servants of God in the Catholic Church for the binding and loosing of sin---“that the gates of the netherworld shall never prevail against it.”  In the iconography of Easter, the Risen Lord stands triumphant as the Bridge over the abyss of death and final separation, each of His crucified and glorified feet firmly and confidently standing over the shattered gates of hell.  

So while a Priest was having his jaw operation in Florida, his Bishop was dying, his Pope was arranging abdication (for a life of deeper prayerful service), and his countless friends (known and unknown) were praying---all connected in the Lord’s plan “for the good of the Church.”  In faith, we can use relational pronouns like “we” and “our” and “us” so freely, because our lives together are “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).  And the sooner we beg the Lord to deepen our understanding and further our extension of these bridge-building relations of holy communion in and from His Church, the sooner we shall know the joy of Lazarus in the “bosom of Abraham” (safely nestled in the family of God) as well as share with bold and boundless extravagance the heavenly treasures beyond the Rich Man’s wildest dreams.

Bonus Thoughts on the Mystery of Today as the Last of Benedict XVI’s Papacy

(I was asked to compose the following meditation for our Diocesan “My Year of Faith” blog)

Among his countless responsibilities before being elected to the papacy, Joseph Ratzinger was the “Cardinal Protector” of the Casa Balthasar, a small international house of formation and discernment located in Rome.  During the time that I lived there (1991-93---before my teaching career in our Diocese or entering seminary), Cardinal Ratzinger would visit us now and again for supper and extended conversation.  I remember how utterly serene and generous and disciplined he was with his time; even then he was doing so much for so many, including our little group of fifteen young men trying to discover their vocations.  His spontaneous responses to our questions were incisive and profound, worthy of publication as they came forth from his mind and heart.  But my favorite memory of him is a silent and (at least up to now) hidden one.

Since 1986 Cardinal Ratzinger had chaired the committee which drafted and oversaw the completion of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  For the Holy Mass of its official promulgation on October 11, 1992---the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council---I had through the Casa Balthasar been invited to be one of the lectors at that liturgy.  Coming very early that morning to the rehearsal at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, I was overwhelmed that already there was a sea of Cardinals, other Bishops, and every manner of lay faithful mulling about and talking with great anticipation.  In the midst of all of this holy commotion, I happened to notice Cardinal Ratzinger enter the church discretely and slip immediately into the Marian side chapel where the Holy Eucharist is reserved; he remained there in silent prayer until the Sacred Liturgy began.

I thought then---and still do---that this man has chosen what is essential.  In his abdication of the papacy “for the good of the Church,” Pope Benedict does not at all simply slip away from the crowds and the commotion.  Spending the final period of his earthly life in hidden prayer, he enters more deeply into the essential.  In the Catechism (#773) we read that “the ‘Marian’ dimension of the Church precedes the ‘Petrine.’”  As he moves into the Mater Ecclesiae [Mother of the Church] Monastery at the heart of Vatican City, Benedict XVI goes before us in Marian contemplation and intercession, further shepherding our sharing in the Heavenly Liturgy already begun.