Today’s Gospel is the Parable of Lazarus (or Dives) and the rich man. The parable is about two people: a rich man and a poor man. The rich man “dressed in purple garments” (a sign of wealth) and “dined sumptuously.” The poor man dressed in rags and lived on the verge of starvation, hoping for “scraps.” The rich man was apparently healthy. The poor man was covered in sores licked by dogs.

And they lived side-by-side. The poor man “was lying” at the rich man’s door. 

We’re told nothing of their encounters, whether the rich man actively tried to drive this “bum” away or was too taken up with his meals to even notice. 

All we know is that the great equalizer that notices everyman — death — arrives for both of them. Their eternal fate is the Gospel’s focus.

The poor man is presented as in heaven, in Jewish terms “the bosom of Abraham.” The poor man is in “the netherworld, where he was in torment” amid fire.

Heaven and hell are not eternal reversals of our lot in this world. The poor man is not saved just because he is poor but because, within the limits and confines of his suffering-filled life, he must have had some measure of love for another. The rich man is not damned just because he is rich but because, within the limits and confines of his comfort-filled life, he never had a measure of love for this poor man. Even if he didn’t notice him, that failure was clearly morally culpable. And how often is it a question not so much of “not seeing” but of “not wanting to see?”

No, we are told that in the Gospel. Although the rich man seeks mercy in the form of some water from Lazarus, Abraham makes it clear “between us and you a great chasm is established.” That chasm is the lack of love.

Heaven will always be heaven and hell will always be hell because one place is full of love and the other devoid of it. That barrier cannot be crossed, because love can never be non-love and non-love — no matter how much it pretends — will never be love. 

This life is the time for making ourselves loving or not loving. The rich man cannot change who he is forever, even if he could make a request to help out his still-living brothers. 

Obviously, Jesus is speaking to his contemporary Jews, which explains certain aspects of the Gospel. As Jewish eschatology is only coming to understand life after death more clearly in Jesus’s time, that’s why we hear terms in the Gospel as “the netherworld” and “the bosom of Abraham.” Note that it is Abraham, not Lazarus, who speaks to the rich man: Israel’s father-in-faith consoles the just sons of Israel (Lazarus) and instructs the sinful ones (the rich man). And true sons of Israel do not need visitations from the dead because “they have Moses and the prophets.” 

And we have Christ who, in today’s Gospel, reminds us of a truth our world does not like to hear: There is a hell. Hell is real. 

Do you believe that fundamental truth of Catholicism?

Today’s Gospel is illustrated in two works. The first is from an 11th-century German manuscript illustration from what is today the Nürnberg area of Bavaria. The “Codex Aureus Epternacensis” (Golden Gospels) dates from around 1040 and progressively illustrates the temporal and eternal life of the rich man and Lazarus.

The top band represents the earthly lots of the rich man and Lazarus. On the left, the rich man sits in reddish-purple at table with two others. He has a paunch. His table has food on it and he’s being served a tasty dish. Not far away is Lazarus at his door, covered in sores, attended by dogs, begging for food.

In the second band, Lazarus dies alone. On the left we see his death, his soul emerging from his body. On the right, we see that soul, like other souls — childlike — cleansed of his painful sores, on Abraham’s lap, attended by 12 other souls. (Twelve tribes of Israel?)

In the bottom band, the still well-dressed rich man also lies on his death bed but, whereas Lazarus’s soul is gently taken by two angels, two devils tug and claw at the rich man’s soul. Four people attend his poor death.

In the middle, a devil carries his soul into hell while, in hell, he’s depicted in the center of the flames pleading for relief with Abraham above while seven other damned souls and seven devils surround him. 

About 600 years later, the Flemish Baroque painter of Antwerp, David Teniers the Younger returned to this subject. His oil painting seeks to capture the rich man’s rude awakening to the fact that there is a hell and he is in it, that what was so important on earth suddenly doesn’t matter, and that this is forever.

The gloom and darkness is only slightly illumined, perhaps by infernal fires. The sounds of a party are revealed to be just so much a temptation. The “beautiful people” are hardly beautiful, as the devil escorting him and those in the form of bats flying above him reveal. His eyes are wide open, finally open to the truth of his life and what has been around him. It’s interesting how the UK National Gallery of Art, which holds this painting in London, summarizes it:

Flanders was a Catholic country and the idea of hell was very real, but sinners could receive forgiveness for their trespasses. This is a picture meant as a moral message, but perhaps with a light tone.

Are we to assume that our modern enlightened world, unlike retrograde Catholic Flanders, doubts “hell was very real?” Because while the message may be “moral” — asking us to repent and to recognize our obligations in charity — there is hardly anything of “a light tone” about this man’s eternity, just begun but never to end.

Take St. Josemaría Escrivá’s advice (The Way, no. 749):

There is a hell. Not a very original statement, you think. I will repeat it then: there is a hell! Echo it … at the right moment, in the ear of one friend, and of another, and another.