“Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.”

          It is easy to think that a miracle will solve all your problems. If only God would offer an incontrovertible proof of His existence, or His goodness, then all the faithless or non-practicing members of my family would believe in Him. If only He would answer my prayers for healing, I would stop doubting. If only He would appear in a vision to my spouse, then he or she would give up their vices or addictions.

          If our Lord reacted the way that we do, I am sure that He would be exasperated with this way of thinking. I hear this parable and the response of the rich man, “Oh no, father Abraham,” and I hear the many voices who have told me, “Oh no, Father, if only you would tell my son, sister, neighbor, etc.”

          Even though our Lord does not experience exasperation at our weakness and repeated pleas, His own life illustrates the point He puts in the mouth of Abraham today. After three years of His earthly ministry, after countless miraculous healings, expulsions of demons, and even raising two people from the dead, where are the crowds who pressed around Him? Where are the mothers and fathers whose children were cured? Where are the ex-demoniacs who were freed from the power of evil? Where are even His closest friends who saw countless miracles up close, when the proof of their faith is demanded as He hangs on the Cross? They are nowhere in sight. The Jewish officials who know about His greatest miracle of all, His Resurrection, bribed the guards to cover it up.

          Likewise in our own day, miracles still happen. Documented cures from Lourdes, the miracle of the sun at Fatima, the extraordinary events in the life of Padre Pio, the ongoing research revealing more and more extraordinary qualities of the tilma of Juan Diego impressed with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. These and many more miracles continue to happen, and yet more and more people deny God or live in indifference to Him.

          While there certainly are people who live indifferently to God and His Church because of profound suffering that they have experienced, this isn’t the normal experience of those who stop coming to church. Most people who stop coming to church, studies have shown, just get caught up with life, and then when they stop showing up, no one reaches out to them or asks what happened. They realize that no one really missed them, that all the welcome and love they seemed to experience turned out to be superficial when someone had to go out of their way to show them they care.

          I have known people who come to this country escaping from real persecution, from countries like Venezuela or Nicaragua, where socialist regimes restrict the free practice of the Catholic faith. They are thrilled to attend Mass each Sunday without being watched by government agents. But then the months and years go by, and the “American dream” does what socialism couldn’t: replaces the love of God in their hearts with the love of our national idol, the almighty Dollar.

          As many threats as exist to our faith, as many temptations as there are that could pull on the hearts of our children, the greatest is not gender ideology or social media (as corrosive as they truly are). At the core is the same temptation that has always existed since the dawn of time: to value this world over the next. After all, it’s doubtful that Fortune 500 CEOs really care about gender identity on any principled level. They just decided it was in their best economic interest, and so long as it is, they’ll continue flying the flag of self-actualization and self-determination in its currently popular form. The problem we see is just the surface. The real problem is so much deeper: attachment to our own will, to our own mistaken notions of who we are and what really matters.

          Thus, the solution proposed by our Lord is just as applicable today. Love for the poor, closeness to the poor, is an indispensable measure of the legitimacy of our faith. Those who measure the credibility of our faith based on our good works might be motivated by a misunderstanding of what religion is all about (“making the world a better place”), but they are served by a fundamentally correct instinct: The poor really matter.

          We can see Christ in the poor and love Christ in the poor for a simple reason: Jesus was poor. He was poor in the self-emptying of His Incarnation, taking on the weakness of the human condition in His birth in a stable at Bethlehem. He was poor in following the grace of the Incarnation to its completion at Calvary. And He was poor in the manner of His life, making Himself and His Apostles dependent on the generosity of others, teaching them to be content with what they were offered.

          The miracle that our erring family members need, the miracle our children need, the miracle the world needs, is the conversion of our own lives. When you take to heart the law and the prophets (that is, the Scriptures), when you follow with courage and grace the teachings of Christ’s Church and the convictions of your conscience, when you demonstrate compassion to the poor and suffering in all their different forms, then you can leave aside the easy solutions and magical thinking of “Oh no, father Abraham,” and heed the admonition that St. Paul gives His son Timothy today: “But you, man of God, pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. Compete well for the faith. Lay hold of eternal life.”

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

XXVI Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXV