Today's Gospel reading makes my conscience burn as I pass the homeless and needy on my way to the various activities that make up my life. In the reading, a rich man (whose name is never given) ignores a poor man (who is given a name--Lazarus) who dies at the rich man's door. Lazarus is rewarded in death and the unnamed rich man is tormented.
The Gospels are filled with Jesus warning that the rich will be tormented and the poor will be rewarded. Now, I like to point at the amazingly wealthy and lay judgement upon them (seriously, they deserve such judgement; billionaires, in particular, are reprehensible), yet I live a generally comfortable life, especially when compared to the majority of the world. In fact, my comfort often comes at the expense of those people who are most in need. Sure, I justify this by telling myself that I am just a speck in the larger system, that my life faces enough challenges as is, and that the sacrifices I do make are more than most people I know; however, I know that these are empty attempts to assuage a guilt burrowed deep within me.
Even if I were to go on mission trips and build homes and clean irrigation systems, or spend every evening in soup kitchen or helping the old or neglected, as long as I returned home to my comfortable house, I would still fall short of filling that endless guilt. Some people, many of the saints in the Catholic Church, give everything up in the attempt to bury that guilt, yet reading their stories shows that they never fully find that peace. So I ignore these uncomfortable reflections and go about my life doing the little bits that I do, hoping that God's mercy truly is infinite.