"As the twig is bent..."

Right outside my office, our parish food pantry is open three days a week. Every time I walk down the hall, I encounter guests waiting to be helped. It becomes so happenstance that I often have to force myself to acknowledge their presence and at least say "hello." When I join parishioners to help with our Sunday Supper for the poor, I have to consciously avoid sitting with my fellow parishioners that I know so well, and join a stranger at a table to share a meal.  For all kinds of reasons, we can be blind to the needs of others, even those who are suffering greatly. Today's gospel (Luke 16:19-31)relates a story of indifference to human suffering in the person of Lazarus.

A Korean proverb says, "as the twig is bent, so grows the tree." Every day, many forces and circumstances bend us this way and that: job stress, interpersonal tensions, even plain old laziness. What keeps us growing strong and straight is the voice of Jesus, the One risen from the dead who leads us to true life and happiness.

Image from WIX

The Synod on Synodality recognized that "Jesus never sent anyone away without stopping to listen and to speak to them, whether men or women, Jews or pagans, doctors of the law or publicans, righteous men and women or sinners, beggars, the blind, lepers or the sick.  By meeting people wherever their history and personal freedom had led them, He revealed to them the face of the Father. By listening to the needs and to the faith of those He met, and by responding through words and gestures, He renewed their lives, opening the path to healed relationships...He asks us, His disciples, to do the same and, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, gives us the capacity to do it, conforming our hearts to His...When we listen to our sisters and brothers, we are participants in the way that God in Jesus Christ comes to meet each of us" (Final Document, 51).

We hear the voice of Jesus not only in the proclamation of the Scriptures but also in many other ways: through the good work of others, through our own experience of doing good for others, in the cry of the poor and needy. Such