March 1 2018 – Thursday of the 2nd week of Lent – Luke 16:19-31

      Today, as we hear the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, I think of some of statistics regarding poverty and income inequality in the United States.  One article I read talked about the Silicon Valley in northern California, with rich communities like Palo Alto and San Jose.  One in three children in those communities as said to be at risk of hunger.  The median home value in Palo Alto is $2.7 million.  As of October 2017, the average rent of an apartment in Palo Alto is $3,250.   Another article stated that while the number of Americans who receive food stamps is falling, which peaked at 47.6 million Americans in 2013, 42.6 million American still receive food stamps.  And in newspapers and on the internet you will find numerous articles about the increase in wealth inequality and income inequality in our country.  In 1970, the top 1% wealthy individuals in the US earned about 10% of the total income – now it is more than 20% of total income and growing.   One recent study claims that the gap in the wealth that different American households have accumulated is more extreme now than any at time since the Great Depression in the 1930s.  The average income of the top 1% of our country is $1.15 million - more than 25 times the average of $45,500 that the rest of the country earns.  

         These statistics on the rich and the poor are alarming, aren’t they?  But, perhaps there is another way we can look at the rich and the poor.  According to a homily given by Early Church Father St John Chrystostom, the rich man is not the one who has collected many possessions, but rather the one who needs no possessions.  The poor man is not the one who has no possessions, but the one who has many desires.  If we see someone who is greedy for many things, we should consider him the poorest of all, even if he has acquired a great deal of money.  Yet, if we see someone with few needs, we should count him the richest of all, even if he has acquired no material possessions at all.  Just as we would not not call a person healthy who was always thirsty, even if he enjoyed abundance and lived by rivers and springs, the same standard should be given in the way we perceive someone as wealthy. Some is not healthy if they are always desiring someone else’s property. If one cannot control his own greed, even if he has wealth in extreme abundance, how can he ever be perceived as affluent?  According to St John Chrysostom, those who are satisfied with what they have, who are please with their own possessions, even if they are the poorest of all by the material standards of our secular world, they are really the richest of all by the lens of faith.  Don’t these views of St John Chrysostom give us a lot to ponder?