Jesus’ fight against indifference

The WORD in other words (2022) by Fr Antonio Pernia SVD – Divine Word Mission Institute, Divine Word Seminary Tagaytay

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time – C

The Jewish writer and holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, was a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In his 1962 novel, “The Town Beyond the Wall,” he tells the story of what he calls “the spectator,” that is, about a man who lived in an apartment overlooking the town square. Each day this man peered down from his apartment window, watching as thousands of Jews were herded into the death trains. Wiesel writes that the face of this man reflected no pity, no pleasure, no shock, not even anger or interest. The face was indifferent to the spectacle. He was simply a spectator.

Wiesel says that, in a certain sense, he could understand the brutality of the prison guards and the executioners in the concentration camp. What he could not understand was the indifference of the man by the window, the indifference of the “spectator.” And so, Wiesel began fighting indifference, writing about it, speaking about it. In his Millennium Lecture at the White House, he said: “The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference; the opposite of education is not ignorance, but indifference; the opposite of art is not ugliness, but indifference; the opposite of life is not death, but indifference.” Doing nothing.

In today’s Gospel parable, the rich man ended up in hellfire not because he did something evil to Lazarus, the poor man lying outside his door. He did not object to the poor man’s presence outside his house; he did not call the police to have the poor man removed from his house; he did not push or kick the poor man out of his property. He did nothing to the poor man. But that precisely is the reason he ended up in hellfire. He did nothing. He was indifferent. He was simply a spectator. Or, maybe, not even a spectator. For apparently, the rich man did not even notice the poor man outside his door. Indeed, utterly indifferent. And when the rich man did see the poor man, it was too late. From his place of torment, “he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.”

What today’s Gospel condemns is the sin of INDIFFERENCE – the sin of “doing nothing” in the face of human suffering, the sin of looking the other way and refusing to get involved. This is the sin of the priest and the levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37), and the sin of those condemned to eternal punishment in the parable of the Last Judgement (Mt 25:31-46). “What you did not do for one of these least brothers or sisters of mine, you did not do for me.”