Thursday March 4, 2021 - Second week of Lent - Blessed are those who have heard the Word with a good and generous heart, who hold it back and bear fruit through their perseverance - Gospel of Jesus Christ Luke 16, 19-31

Starting from today’s Gospel - speaking of the parable of the bad rich and poor Lazarus - we can say that the Lent period invites us to rethink our relationship with wealth. In the parable, Jesus did not mention the name of this rich man to say that each of us is rich in something (human, intellectual, material wealth ...), even if the quantity is unequal. Sometimes this wealth blinds us, preventing us from seeing the other's hand reaching out to us; it makes us deaf to the cries of the people around us. The rich man in the parable represents this blindness, this deafness, because he refused alms to poor Lazarus: not sympathetic to the misery of others; thinking only of his own enjoyment, leaving Lazarus to sigh unnecessarily at his door; remaining indifferent to the needs of his neighbor; ignoring even the existence of the poor. What lesson can we learn from this parable?

The first is this: Let us know right now that our life does not depend on wealth and that all the treasures in the world cannot extend it by one hour, at the time of our death. The second lesson comes from the pope's homily on this parable. He explained to us that this parable teaches us that God's mercy towards us is closely related to our mercy towards others. It means that when we are not merciful to others, even the mercy of God does not enter our closed hearts.