Fr. Noel Connolly
One thing I often reflect on is power. All my life I have
been a powerful person. I am the eldest child and son. At school I was the
Captain of the School and of the Rugby team and Dux. I became a priest and at
the age of 32 I was appointed Rector of our Seminary in Turramurra and for the
next 32 years held roles like Vicar General and Director of the Columbans in
Australia and New Zealand.
If I am honest I must say that I enjoyed being powerful but
as time passed I was also became frightened of what power could do to me. After
all in the Gospels Jesus’ criticisms are not of the obvious sinners, the
prostitutes and publicans but of the rich and powerful.
One
of my favourite books is Paul Tournier’s The
Violence Inside. I first read it thirty years ago and I have never
forgotten his claim that “the weak are very conscious of their weakness and the
powerful are rarely conscious of their strength”. The successful tend to
believe in the present order of things and become insensitive to weakness and
failure. The powerful often hurt people without intending to. I have seen this
born out often in my own life. I know I have hurt people without ever intending
to. I often find it difficult to understand why the weak just cannot “get their
act together” after all, “life wasn’t meant to be easy.”
We
all know that power can corrupt and I often try to examine my conscience in
that regard. But I think the more insidious effect of power is that it can
blind us. We just cannot appreciate the point of view of the weak and worse
still we cannot see what power and prosperity are doing to ourselves. Tournier
suggests that a person’s moral conscience or sensitivity was often in inverse
proportion to their power. In his experience as a medical doctor he found that
the powerful were the hardest to deal with because they were the most fearful
and vulnerable, dissatisfied but impelled towards a constant effort to increase
their power still further. Power and affluence seemed to stifle the spirit.
That is why most of Jesus’ warnings were reserved for the
rich and powerful. He tried to warn them how dangerous wealth and power can be
for the spirit.
This is graphically illustrated in today’s parable
of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar who wanted to eat the crumbs that fell
from his table. The rich man’s sin was not so much what he did but that he
never even noticed Lazarus. It was as if Lazarus only existed as part of the
landscape. The rich man could not appreciate Lazarus’ need and was completely
indifferent to his suffering. He certainly didn’t see him as a person and
possibly never spoke to him. But before we become too righteous about the rich
man in the parable we should ask ourselves whether our power and affluence have
blinded us. Are there needy people like Lazarus sitting just outside our door
that we cannot see?
The
irony of today’s parable is as Jesus points out that if the rich man had have
noticed Lazarus he could have been his salvation. The poor man who could have
saved the rich man.
Luke
makes the same point in his account of Jesus’ visit to the house of Simon, the
Pharisee. Simon was a powerful man with eyes only for his own virtue. He didn’t
wash Jesus’ feet and despised the sinful woman who not only washed Jesus’ feet
with her tears but dried them with her hair and anointed them. Simon could not
appreciate the suffering or the love of the sinful woman. But Jesus points out
to Simon his self-righteousness, the shallowness of his love and how
judgemental and insensitive he is. He suggests that Simon could learn a lot
from this sinful woman. A sinner could save a successful, religious man.
This
is the point our present Pope, Francis keeps making we must turn to the poor.
Only that can save us.
We
like to say “we never had it so good” but actually the Gospel would say “we
never had it so dangerous”. Power and prosperity tend to give us arrogant and
self-important eyes rather than loving and compassionate eyes. Arrogant eyes
unconsciously have eyes only for themselves and their virtue and projects. They do not see the need, virtues and beauty
of the other.
May I
close with a story? There once was a
famous and wise rabbi who asked his disciples, “how can you determine when the
night has ended and the new day begun?” One disciple replied, “When you can see
the form of an animal in the distance and recognise whether it is a sheep or a
dog.” Another disciple responded, “When there is enough light to tell the
difference between a black and a white thread.” But the rabbi answered, “The
new day has dawned when you can look into the face of every man and woman and
recognise the face of your brother or sister. If you cannot do that, then it is
still night.” That is the lesson the rich man, Simon the Pharisee and we
have to learn.
