The Sin of Not Seeing

The terrible distance between the person at our gate and the heart that refuses to behold him

“And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus.”

There is something terrifying about this Gospel because the rich man does not appear to do anything particularly monstrous.

He does not strike Lazarus.

He does not order him driven away.

He does not mock him.

He simply lives as though Lazarus were not there.

And Christ tells us that this is enough to reveal the abyss already opening within his heart.

Lazarus lies at his gate.

Not in another country.

Not somewhere beyond his reach.

Not hidden from him.

At his gate.

He must pass him.

Day after day.

The dogs see Lazarus. They come and lick his wounds. Creation itself seems to recognize the suffering man while the one made in the image of God walks past him.

This is the terrible possibility revealed by the Gospel: we can become accustomed to what should break our hearts.

We can learn not to see.

The Fathers feared this hardness more than many of the obvious sins because they understood how quietly it develops. A man does not wake one morning incapable of mercy. He becomes incapable of mercy through a thousand small refusals of attention.

He refuses the interruption.

He protects his comfort.

He explains away the suffering before him.

He becomes occupied with his own concerns.

And eventually the person at the gate becomes part of the scenery.

This is why the Desert Fathers fought so fiercely against distraction, self-love, judgment, and the endless preoccupation with oneself. They understood that these things do more than disturb prayer.

They blind us.

And the blind eye we turn toward God we will almost certainly turn toward others.

For the two cannot finally be separated.

We deceive ourselves if we imagine that we can ignore the living God and somehow remain deeply attentive to the human person. And we deceive ourselves equally if we imagine that we can cultivate contempt, indifference, impatience, or coldness toward the person before us while possessing some profound interior communion with God.

The same heart sees both.

Or fails to see both.

This is why the spiritual life cannot be reduced to religious activity.

We may attend services, read spiritual books, keep fasts, discuss theology, defend doctrine, surround ourselves with icons, and speak endlessly about the Fathers—and still step over Lazarus.

Indeed, religion itself can become another piece of fine linen.

Something with which we clothe ourselves while remaining untouched by the suffering at our gate.

The Fathers would have none of this.

They were ruthless about the connection between prayer and mercy because Christ Himself is ruthless about it.

What is the value of speaking about divine love if the person beside us experiences only our irritation?

What does our asceticism mean if it makes us harder?

What has our prayer accomplished if we remain incapable of being interrupted?

What have we learned from standing before the face of Christ if we cannot recognize Him when His face is wounded, inconvenient, confused, repetitive, unattractive, demanding, or poor?

Lazarus does not arrive at a convenient hour.

He lies at the gate.

That is where God so often places the test of our spiritual life: directly across the path we would prefer to take.

And notice something even more disturbing.

When the rich man finally sees Lazarus, he still does not truly see him.

From Hades he cries:

“Send Lazaros.”

Send him with water.

Send him to my brothers.

Even now Lazarus remains someone to be used.

The rich man knows his name. This makes his former indifference almost unbearable. Lazarus was not an anonymous beggar after all. Somehow the rich man knew who he was.

He knew his name.

And walked past him.

Hell has exposed what his life had concealed: he had lived at a distance from the human person standing immediately before him.

The “great chasm” did not suddenly appear after death.

He had been digging it every day.

Every time he passed the gate.

Every time he chose not to see.

Every time another man’s suffering was judged less important than his own comfort.

Every refusal of mercy widened it.

Until the distance became fixed.

This should make us tremble.

Because we are always forming the eyes with which we shall eventually behold eternity.

The heart is being trained now.

If we repeatedly refuse God in the small movements of conscience, we should not imagine that some spectacular intervention will necessarily awaken us later.

“If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.”

Christ could hardly speak more starkly.

We tell ourselves that we need greater certainty.

A clearer sign.

A stronger experience.

A miracle.

Some unmistakable intervention from heaven.

No.

Often we need only to obey what has already been given.

The person is already at the gate.

The commandment has already been spoken.

The wound is already before us.

God has already come near.

We simply do not want Him in this form.

We want God without Lazarus.

We want Christ without interruption.

We want prayer without the demands of love.

We want transcendence without responsibility for the person lying within reach.

But there is no such Christianity.

The modern elders repeatedly call us back to attention precisely because attention is already a form of love. To become watchful is not merely to monitor one’s thoughts. It is to awaken from the narcotic of self-preoccupation and become capable of receiving reality as God gives it.

And reality almost always has a face.

Someone has been placed before us.

Someone whose voice we have stopped hearing.

Someone whose weakness irritates us.

Someone whose suffering has become familiar.

Someone we have reduced to a problem.

Someone we pass every day.

Perhaps the most frightening question raised by this Gospel is therefore not:

Who are the poor?

It is:

Whom have I stopped seeing?

Who has become part of the scenery of my life?

Whose suffering have I explained away?

Whose voice do I no longer really hear?

Whom have I quietly decided is not my responsibility?

And perhaps more terribly:

How many times have I asked God to reveal Himself while stepping over the place where He was already waiting for me?

The Desert Fathers fled the world, but they did not flee reality. They fled illusion. They went into the desert to have every falsehood stripped away until they could see God, themselves, and their brother without disguise.

We need that same stripping.

Because there is a Lazarus at every gate.

And there is a gate within every heart.

Christ stands there.

Quietly.

Wounded.

Waiting to discover whether all our prayers have taught us to recognize Him.

The time to see is now.

Before indifference becomes character.

Before distraction becomes blindness.

Before the distance becomes a chasm.

Before we discover that the God we claimed to seek had been lying at our gate all along.