Who's at My Gate?
“But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”
We often talk about justice as if it’s mostly a matter of seeing— as if proximity to need, being able to perceive it, or passing it daily count as compassion. The rich man in today’s parable doesn’t harm Lazarus or commit some spectacular act of cruelty. His fate is set quietly, day after day, by unbothered habits, with no room left for Lazarus in a world already overflowing with material abundance. The line between the two, which later becomes the chasm between Abraham’s bosom and Hades, is not a fence, wall, law, or feud. It’s routine.
Every day, the rich man steps over Lazarus the same way many of us step over problems we know how to name but have never learned to interrupt. Over time, those who were once neighbors become background; what was once proximity becomes a partition. The chasm, when it appears, is abrupt but earned. It is the logical conclusion of what the rich man’s unremarkable days have built.
Lent is a season of noticing what our habits have made of us. It stirs our noticing toward the places where routine shields us from discomfort and leaves us practicing indifference. Right now, the gate is still a gate and not yet a gulf. This parable ends, not with a clear call to charity, but with the ache of unfinished business, and the question now hanging in the air: “Who is waiting at my gate, and how long will I leave them there?”
Papa Dios, help us retrain our attention so we no longer step over those you’ve placed near. Interrupt the routines that keep us insulated from what is real. Before the threshold becomes a chasm, grant us the courage to notice, to cross, and to respond as you would. Amen.
STEPH DE LA FE
Master of Divinity Student
Miami, Florida