A Wake-Up Call

Dear Friend, 

In the dream image I shared in a homily last weekend, I’m on a rooftop patio that resembles a place I knew well in my student days learning Franciscan theology. It was a great place for parties, cleverly constructed over an extension of faculty offices and accessible by a small stairway. In the dream I’m conversing with a student who walks ahead of me as we talk. She’s looking back at me, and before I can warn her, she steps off the edge of the roof and disappears. The scene shifts and I’m approaching her across the soft green grass where she’s landed and is starting to straighten up. She’s landed on her feet and I think about her ankles. Ouch!

A wake-up call? Yes – and its variations will repeatedly crop up in the Gospel of Luke as we begin the season of, well, fall (sorry about that). In Luke our fall comes through inattention to the suffering poor and the illusions of wealth and comfort. Luke has the master teacher Jesus educate us through parables depicting all the ironic reversals that mark the threshold of God’s Kingdom. We are moving to the climax of his own story. There, Jesus Christ the King hangs on a cross between two criminals. He offers forgiveness and the promise of Paradise, the ultimate safe landing.

This week in the parable of the rich man blinded by wealth there is no safe landing, only torment and an unbridgeable chasm separating him from the poor man Lazarus. Wake up! I’m to be schooled by Saint Francis, who moved beyond the walls of Assisi, built community with lepers, nursed their sores, created places of communion, and rose with Christ through compassion. His ankles hurt, I’m sure. I’m to learn from his humility. 

Gratefully,

Father Dan