The Poverty and Misery of Lazarus

Consider the crowd of attendants at a banquet: the table-preparers, the wine-pourers, the stewards, and those who lead them, the musicians, dancers, flute-players, comedians, flatterers, and parasites, following the trail of vanity. To acquire these, how many poor are wronged! How many orphans are crushed! How many widows weep! How many, being violently torn apart, rush toward strangulation. The soul of such a person, having tasted some water of Lethe, completely forgets who she is and with whom she is joined, and that she will one day be released from this union and, having been resurrected, will dwell again with the body. But when the time of the necessary and appointed command comes, which severs her from the fellowship with the body, a calculation of what has been lived enters, and a useless repentance occurs after the need has arisen. For regret is only a sorrow when the one reconsidering still has the power to correct; but when the activity of the one doing right has been taken away, sorrow is worthless and the change of mind is vain.

There was once a man named Lazarus (Luke 16:20). The word does not describe him as a mere poor man, but as one deprived of the necessities of spending and need, and also being tormented by painful sickness and having a body broken, homeless, unsupported, untreated, thrown at the gate of the rich. And with great care in the narration, he brings the misfortunes of the poor to a tragic climax, so as to expose the hardness of the one who does not show mercy. For he who suffers nothing from hunger or disease is an irrational beast, pitiless or sympathetic, a form badly shaped into a human, falsely pretending nature by his intention; rather, he is even more unsympathetic than the beasts themselves; for even pigs, when one is being slaughtered, are drawn to a certain sad sensation and trouble the butcher with their blood; but oxen stand by such a slaughter, empathizing with a sound, signaling the pain. And herds of sheep, when one of the flock falls into the clutches of wild beasts, fall into a state where the one held is being sought, and some mournful sound fills the air, seeking its kind and companion. But a human, the rational animal, who is day-by-day being educated in goodness according to the likeness of God, cares so little...

Oh, the relatives in the painful circumstances of misfortunes! Thus lay the much-painful and blessed poor man, not having feet, for he would have fled the insolent and proud one, having changed to another place; instead of the murderous gate, being deprived of hands by the closed hands of the poor, and not even having a palm to stretch out for a request, being obstructed by those very organs of the voice and producing a certain hoarse and rough sound of the sternum, simply maimed in all his limbs, leaving behind a wicked disease, a pitiful example of human weakness.

But nevertheless, not even such a list of misfortunes turned the Exalted toward a visit; rather, He leaves the man like a stone, unresolving the sin being perfected. For he did not have the common and respectable things to say to accuse: 'I did not know, I did not realize; the poor man eluded me, my mistress.' He lay before the gate, a spectacle of entering and exiting, so that he might work out the necessary judgment of the proud one. He desired even the crumbs of the table and did not even obtain these; but one was bursting from abundance, and the other was melting from want.

It was indeed good and just for that Canaanite, that Phoenician woman, to teach the wealthy misanthrope, saying those things written: 'O insolent and proud one, and the dogs eat from the crumbs falling from the table of their masters (Luke 16:21); but you did not deserve this gift for your brother, your kindred?'

But the dogs were carefully fed, especially the watchdogs; and they were worthy of a roof and a bed and had attendants appointed with haste, but the image of God was thrown down, neglected and trampled, which the Master Artist and Creator fashioned with His own hand, if Moses is reliable to demonstrate the origin of men.

If, then, the account of Lazarus ended thus, and such was the nature of things, as to describe our life by the irregularity of this life, I would have left great voices babbling, through which the created ones pass similarly, thus unequally among their kindred. Since, however, the things remaining are beautiful for listening, in the...

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