26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
 September 25, 2022

First Reading:  Amos 6:1a, 4-7
Psalm # 146 R: Praise the Lord, Oh my soul!
Second Reading: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
Acclamation: Though Jesus Christ was rich, yet he became poor, so that by his poverty you might
become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)
Gospel: Luke 16:19-31 - The Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus. 
Theme:  God’s Wake Up call

Commentary By Jane Prini 

Do you use an alarm clock to wake you up in the morning? Many alarm clocks have a snooze button. The bottom is hit after the alarm goes off, and you can go back to sleep. In about 10 minutes, it will go off again. You can keep hitting that snooze button and keep going back to sleep.

The problem is two things can do wrong with doing that. First, if you keep hitting that button, you will be late or miss out on something. The second is that after awhile you no longer hear the alarm so you sleep right through it. 
Did you know that God sometimes sounds an alarm in our lives? It is like a “wake-up” call. We can choose to say, “Not now God, call me later.”, or we can choose to ‘wake up’ and obey God. Some people hit that ‘snooze button’ so often that they now longer hear God calling them. When they finally wake up, it is too late. That is what happened in our gospel story today.

  Jesus tells a parable about a rich man who has the best of everything, and a poor man, Lazarus, who is homeless, hungry, in rags and sick with sores that the dogs lick. Lazarus dreams of eating the scraps from the rich man’s table. The rich man walked past Lazarus every day without helping him. Do you think that it was possible that he did this so often that after awhile he no longer saw Lazarus? 

They both die. Lazarus goes to heaven, and the rich man goes to hell. From hell, a place that completely separates you from God, he sees Lazarus with Father Abraham and asked that Lazarus serve him by cooling his tongue with a drop of water. Abraham tells the rich man “No”. He reminds the rich man that in his life he had everything he wanted but Lazarus had nothing. 

The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers to warn them. Again the answer is “No”. They have Moses and the Prophets to remind them how to take care of the homeless, the widows, the hungry, so even someone coming back from the dead would not wake them up. The rich man woke up too late to help himself!

God is still sending “wake-up” calls today. Will we choose to hit the snooze button and be attached to our possessions or wake up and choose to let God teach us how we can show his love to others? St. John Paul II says this another way: “What really matters in life is that we are loved by Christ and that we love him in return. In comparison to the love of Jesus, everything else is secondary. And, without the love of Jesus, everything is useless.”

Prayer for Families:     Heavenly Father, may we never be guilty of hitting the snooze button saying, “Later Lord.” Instead, let us rise up and follow you. We ask this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

Discussion starters: (Choose one or more of these after reading today’s scripture readings)

1. Discuss how to hear God remind us how we are to behave with our family and neighbours. 
2. Choose one or more of the family activities below to remember to ‘wake up’ and follow Jesus.

CLICK, READ MORE FOR FAMILY RESOURCES, Colouring Page, Cross Word Puzzle and Word Search
 

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