Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

'If my brothers could just see the dead rise, they would live in faith!' The reply is blunt: 'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.' Our thoughts, predicted by Christ, are given voice by the rich man. His response is without room for misinterpretation: if revelation is not sufficient for your faith, then neither will any miracle be. What miracle can prove to us Jesus' divinity? What visible sign can make known to us what is invisible? Only faith can confirm such truths to us. Faith in Christ, and in what He has revealed to us. It is no coincidence that the only character named in any of Christ's parables shares the name of one Christ raised from the dead, and that in the same parable, it is asked that people might see Lazarus raised from the dead in order that they might have faith. Abraha'’s message to the rich man is the same as Christ’s message to us: that anyone who is not capable of faith without miracles, is not capable of faith with miracles.

There is a further lesson for those who preach the Gospel. We are told that Lazarus would "gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man's table." The scraps that the rich man denies Lazarus, that he sees as valueless but would have sustained Lazarus, are like those teachings of the Church which some would have us withhold from those we preach to. Discarding parts of the Gospel from the faithful is like inviting Lazarus to a feast only to serve him no food. When one rejects these scraps and withholds them from the poor, those who hunger and thirst for the truth of the Gospel, he becomes what Jeremiah warns us against, "like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth." When we add in what we think the Gospel is missing, not what can help clarify the Gospel or apply it to modern knowledge, but instead try to "fix" divine revelation, we dam the living water of Christ's word and make a desert out of the faith.