Day by day, I follow the Catholic Daily Bible Readings, trying to find something in the mutually illuminating passages, that gives wisdom for the day. 

Reading 1, Jeremiah 17:5-10

5 he Lord says this, ‘Accursed be anyone who trusts in human beings, who relies on human strength and whose heart turns from God.

6 Such a person is like scrub in the wastelands: when good comes, it does not affect him since he lives in the parched places of the desert, uninhabited, salt land.

7 ‘Blessed is anyone who trusts in the Lord, with the Lord to rely on.

8 Such a person is like a tree by the waterside that thrusts its roots to the stream: when the heat comes it has nothing to fear, its foliage stays green; untroubled in a year of drought, it never stops bearing fruit.

9 ‘The heart is more devious than any other thing, and is depraved; who can pierce its secrets?

10 I, the Lord, search the heart, test the motives, to give each person what his conduct and his actions deserve.

 Gospel, Luke 16:19-31

19 ‘There was a rich man who used to dress in purple and fine linen and feast magnificently every day.

20 And at his gate there used to lie a poor man called Lazarus, covered with sores,

21 who longed to fill himself with what fell from the rich man’s table. Even dogs came and licked his sores.

22 Now it happened that the poor man died and was carried away by the angels into Abraham’s embrace. The rich man also died and was buried.

23 ‘In his torment in Hades he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off with Lazarus in his embrace.

24 So he cried out, “Father Abraham, pity me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.”

25 Abraham said, “My son, remember that during your life you had your fill of good things, just as Lazarus his fill of bad. Now he is being comforted here while you are in agony.

26 But that is not all: between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, to prevent those who want to cross from our side to yours or from your side to ours.”

27 ‘So he said, “Father, I beg you then to send Lazarus to my father’s house,

28 since I have five brothers, to give them warning so that they do not come to this place of torment too.”

29 Abraham said, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them.”

30 The rich man replied, “Ah no, father Abraham, but if someone comes to them from the dead, they will repent.”

31 Then Abraham said to him, “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”

 We start today with the bitter wisdom of Jeremiah. His most telling insight is that the person, whose heart is turned away from the source of goodness, cannot benefit from goodness, just as a person who lives in the salt flats cannot benefit from rainfall. This reminds us that some choices are irrevocable: we can shut ourselves off from goodness. In Britain today the newspapers are full of the story that John Venables, who murdered a child when he himself was a child, has now at the age of 27, been returned to prison, because he has broken the terms of his parole. We may speculate as to whether irrevocable damage may have been done to this man, in his own childhood, although we will probably never find an answer. We can on the other hand, know with reasonable certainty, that the soul of a newspaper editor who uses this tragedy and its sad participants, to increase his circulation, is already on the way to the place described by Jeremiah. Of course, such persons will protest that what they do is in the public interest. They may even believe this; but “the heart is more devious than other thing, and is depraved.”  Our only hope is to stay close to God and goodness, however uncomfortable that is. Prayer, meditation and reading of the scripture help believers to do this, but the most vital practice is true love: those who dwell in love, dwell in God, for God is love. Then we can be like trees planted by the waterside, whose leaves are always green.

a tree that's planted by the waterside...

 The rich man of Jesus’ shrewd parable, is already in the “desert” before he dies. He has separated himself from the source of goodness, by his utter refusal of relationship to the poor man at his gate. In his arrogance he has “fixed a great gulf” between himself and his brother, so that he doesn’t even notice him. This is the crime of rich people in all times and places, not that they scorn the poor, but that they no longer see them. The British politician, Michael Foot, who died yesterday, spent a lifetime protesting against the blindness of the rich. Would Jesus have given the rich man an easier destiny if he’d occasionally given a pittance to help the poor man? As I answer this question I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m asking about myself, and all of us in the rich world, who pay very intermittent attention to our brothers and sisters on the other side of the great gulf. Jesus tempts us to argue against the gulf fixed between heaven and hell, although his deadly insight shows that the rich man, even as he suffers, still thinks others should run after him. If we hope this gulf may not be utterly fixed, what are we doing about the gulf on earth?

 Like Jeremiah’s God, Jesus sees the heart, which is more devious than any other thing, but may be saved by savage truth, such as this story.

a great gulf fixed