Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 5; The Holy Venerable-Martyr Anastasia (249-51); the Passing of Our Venerable Father Abraham, Archimandrite and Wonderworker of Rostov (11th c.).
Galatians 6:11-18; Luke 16:19-31.
Read Luke 16:19-31
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Sometimes we don’t realize how things affect each other. Do we sometimes minimize the consequences of our actions because of that?
The rich man in the parable in today’s gospel reading thought that the cause of him being in torment in Hades was his sumptuous feasting in disregard of poor Lazarus laying at his gate. But what if there was a cause prior to that one?
The rich man thought that being told of the effect of those callous acts by someone returning from the netherworld would bring his brothers to repentance. Father Abraham’s response is startling. “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
Clearly, that Testament is not to be ignored because it is Old. In the New Testament, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews urges his readers to attend to Moses and the prophets saying, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
Remember the Parable of the Soils! Sometimes we “do not hear Moses and the prophets” because we participate in acts that spiritually deafen us. Sometimes we lose interest in the spiritual deepening of trying times because they don’t have the emotional fix we enjoyed at the beginning of our journey. Sometimes we persist in divided loyalties, deceiving ourselves that we can serve two masters.
And so, the dominoes fall. We think the problem with the word of God is that it doesn’t speak clearly to us in the life we live when the problem is really that the way we live can prevent us from hearing the word of God.
Bible References