INTRODUCTION

"The oldest style of story is the myth. Pure and simple, it's the fabrication about the origins of our race and our world, though not always as elaborated as we find it in the book of Genesis. Alongside it arose Aesop's fables. Aesop, according to the historian Herodotus, was a slave who lived in the mid-sixth century before Christ, about the same time as one of the Genesis stories was circulating. Grimm's fairy tales and the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, the nineteenth-century Danish storyteller, have almost the same appeal - the color, aroma, taste - as the short story and novel. The parables of Jesus belong to this great classic literature, and excel it."

Joseph Fichtner, OSC
Many Things in Parables
Reflections for Life

"The importance of these gems of Jesus is illustrated by their prominence in His overall ministry. He communicated one-third of His sayings in story form. This suggests how impossible it is to get a true grasp of His message apart from the parables. Much of His teachings on the kingdom, in act, was given in this way. And since His kingdom program underlies the New Testament, the full impact of the gospel is blunted without them. We, therefore, come to the heart of the Lord's ministry when we listen again to His captivating parables on the kingdom."

Stanley Ellisen
PARABLES in the EYE of the STORM

Parables point to the kingdom. They are, indeed, the "arrows of God." They pierce us and make us painfully aware of our need to change the way we relate to ourselves, others, and God. We look and we see. This is how we must live in God's kingdom. We are called, and know ourselves called.

Megan McKenna
Parables
The Arrows of God

The RICH MAN and LAZARUS

There was a rich man, dressed in purple and fine linen, who feasted sumptuously every day. But there was also a poor man, whose name was Lazarus, and who lay ill at the rich man's gate, covered with sores. Lazarus longed to satisfy his hunger with whatever fell from the rich man's table. Not only that, but even the street dogs came to lick his running sores.

Pope Benedict XVI

JESUS of NAZARETH

The Lord wants to lead us from foolish cleverness toward true wisdom; he wants to teach us to discern the real good. And so we have good grounds, even though it is not in the text, to say that, from the perspective of the Psalms, the rich glutton was already an empty-hearted man in this world, and that his carousing was only an attempt to smother this interior emptiness of his.

The parable emphasizes the seriousness of the present. What really matters is what we do right now. The story calls us to a real sense of responsibility for the poor and the oppressed. And all this in reference to God's judgment and criterion.

One is not guilty only when one commits evil, but also when one does not act. The rich man's sin consists in the fact that he has not shown any concern, that he has been blind to the plight of the poor.

Herman Hendrickx
The PARABLES of JESUS
Studies in the Synoptic Gospels

We are all rich in something. Some are intellectually rich: they are educated and cultured, they have good taste and a natural or an acquired refinement. The danger for those people is to look down on the Lazaruses sitting at their gate, who do not appreciate classical music, great books, bridge, crossword puzzles, art exhibitions, refined cuisine. When we are rich by our minds, it is quite easy never to understand the intellectual hunger of those who can feed themselves only with insipid television programs or cheap novels. Others are rich in affections: they have good home and lots of friends surrounding them with love. Do these understand the desperate solitude of the Lazaruses on their doorstep, who suffer from a stale marriage, an unchosen celibacy, a stuffy education? Still others are rich in health, sound judgment, psychological equilibrium, professional success.

Each one of us has a Lazarus at his door, someone who does not have our wealth, whatever it might be, and who would very much want us to share it with him. It is up to us to invite him in and have sit at our table.

Nil Guillemette, SJ
PARABLES for TODAY
Exegis-Reflections