The liturgical station of this Thursday of the second week of Lent transports us to the venerable Basilica of Saint Mary beyond the Tiber (Trastevere), one of the oldest churches in Rome, situated on the right bank of the river. In antiquity, this region was the stronghold of the Jewish community and the most impoverished classes of the capital of the Empire, including the vast majority of the first Roman Christians, who lived in conditions of great humility and were frequently marginalized. The choice of this location for today's liturgy is not accidental, but profoundly theological and pastoral. The Church, by gathering its faithful in this neighborhood of workers and simple people, proposes a harsh warning against the pride and false security generated by material goods, realities frequently observed in the wealthy classes of pagan Rome. Thus, the very physical environment of the station serves as a living sermon: the Christians of Trastevere, materially deprived, embodied the beatitude of poverty of spirit, while the liturgy exhorted them not to envy the rich and powerful whose lives, built on the sand of pride and the flesh, were walking towards perdition. It is the celebration of the structural contrast between human fragility embraced by the grace of God and the illusion of self-sufficiency that blinds man to eternal truths and the coming judgment.
🎵 Introit (Ps 69, 2-4)
Deus, in adjutórium meum inténde: Dómine, ad adjuvándum me festína: confundántur et revereántur inimíci mei, qui quærunt ánimam meam. Ps. Avertántur retrórsum et erubéscant: qui cógitant mihi mala.
O God, come to my assistance; Lord, make haste to help me: let my enemies be confounded and ashamed, who seek to take my life. Ps. Let them turn back and be ashamed who wish me evil.
📜 Epistle (Jer 17, 5-10)
Hæc dicit Dóminus Deus: Maledíctus homo, qui confídit in hómine, et ponit carnem bráchium suum, et a Dómino recédit cor ejus. Erit enim quasi myrícæ in desérto, et non vidébit, cum vénerit bonum: sed habitábit in siccitáte in desérto, in terra salsúginis et inhabitábili. Benedíctus vir, qui confídit in Dómino, et erit Dóminus fidúcia ejus. Et erit quasi lignum, quod transplantátur super aquas, quod ad humórem mittit radíces suas: et non timébit, cum vénerit æstus. Et erit fólium ejus víride, et in témpore siccitátis non erit sollícitum, nec aliquándo désinet fácere fructum. Pravum est cor ómnium et inscrutábile: quis cognóscet illud? Ego Dóminus scrutans cor, et probans renes: qui do unicuíque juxta viam suam, et juxta fructum adinventiónum suárum: dicit Dóminus omnípotens.
Here is what the Lord God says: Cursed is the man who trusts in his fellow man and relies on a carnal arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord. He will be like the tamarisk in the desert, and will not see happiness arrive: but he will dwell in the sterility of the desert, in a brackish and uninhabitable land. Blessed is the man who puts his trust in the Lord and for whom the Lord is hope. He will be like a tree transplanted near the waters, that extends its roots to the moisture and that will not be afraid of the heat when it comes. Its leaves will always be green and in time of drought, it will not be in need and will never cease to produce fruits. Depraved is the heart of men, and impenetrable; who will be able to know it? I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the kidneys. I give to each one, according to his merit and according to the fruit of his works, says the omnipotent Lord.
📖 Gospel (Lk 16, 19-31)
In illo témpore: Dixit Jesus pharisǽis: Homo quidam erat dives, qui induebátur púrpura et bysso: et epulabátur cotídie spléndide. Et erat quidam mendícus, nómine Lázarus, qui jacébat ad jánuam ejus, ulcéribus plenus, cúpiens saturári de micis, quæ cadébant de mensa dívitis, et nemo illi dabat: sed et canes veniébant et lingébant úlcera ejus. Factum est autem, ut morerétur mendícus, et portarétur ab Angelis in sinum Abrahæ. Mórtuus est autem et dives, et sepúltus est in inférno. Elevans autem óculos suos, cum esset in torméntis, vidit Abraham a longe, et Lázarum in sinu ejus: et ipse clamans, dixit: Pater Abraham, miserére mei, et mitte Lázarum, ut intíngat extrémum dígiti sui in aquam, ut refrígeret linguam meam, quia crúcior in hac flamma. Et dixit illi Abraham: Fili, recordáre, quia recepísti bona in vita tua, et Lázarus simíliter mala: nunc autem hic consolátur, tu vero cruciáris. Et in his ómnibus, inter nos et vos chaos magnum firmátum est: ut hi, qui volunt hinc transíre ad vos, non possint, neque inde huc transmeáre. Et ait: Rogo ergo te, pater, ut mittas eum in domum patris mei. Hábeo enim quinque fratres, ut testétur illis, ne et ipsi véniant in hunc locum tormentórum. Et ait illi Abraham: Habent Móysen et Prophétas: áudiant illos. At ille dixit: Non, pater Abraham: sed si quis ex mórtuis íerit ad eos, pæniténtiam agent. Ait autem illi: Si Móysen et Prophétas non áudiunt, neque si quis ex mórtuis resurréxerit, credent.
At that time, Jesus said to the pharisees: There was a rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen and gave, every day, splendid feasts. And there was also a beggar named Lazarus, who lay at his door, covered with ulcers, desirous to satisfy himself with the crumbs that fell from the table of the rich man; but no one gave them to him. The dogs also came and licked his wounds. It happened that the beggar died and was led by the Angels to the bosom of Abraham. Also died the rich man, but in hell he was buried. Elevating his eyes, when he was in the torments, he saw from afar Abraham, and at his side, Lazarus. And he cried out, saying: Father Abraham, have compassion on me and send Lazarus so that he may touch with the extremity of his finger in water, in order to refresh my tongue, because I am burning in this flame. And Abraham said to him: Son, remember that you received goods in your life and Lazarus only received evils. Now he is consoled and you are tormented. Besides, between you and us, there is a great abyss. For this reason those who would wish to pass from here to there and from there come to us, could not do it. And the rich man says: I supplicate you, O father, to send him to the house of my father, since I have five brothers, in order that he may warn them of these things, so that they too do not come to this place of torments. And Abraham answered him: They have Moses and the Prophets: they must hear them. He replied: No, father Abraham; but if some of the dead go to them, they will do penance. Abraham said to him: If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, even if one of these dead resurrected, they would not believe.
⚖️ The illusion of riches and the firmness of trust in God
The anguished cry of the Introit, "O God, come to my assistance; Lord, make haste to help me", resonates as the silent voice of Lazarus and of all the poor in spirit who deposit their sole hope in divine mercy. The proper name Lazarus means "God helps", revealing the perfect antithesis to the rich man of the parable, who found his false help only in the purple and in the sumptuousness of the banquets. As Saint Augustine teaches (Sermo 36), the divine justice inexorably inverts the earthly conditions not by an unrestricted condemnation to matter, but in response to the intimate disposition of the heart: the rich man perishes by his voluntary indifference and worldly attachment, while the beggar is exalted by his unshakeable patience in the tribulations. Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 32, a. 5) clarifies this dynamic by pointing out that the ruin of the rich man derived from the sin of omission, failing gravely in the virtue of justice by retaining for himself the goods that, by divine law, should succor the misery that lay at his door. The impassable abyss consolidated after death, as Hugh of Saint Victor analyzes (De Sacramentis, Book II, Part XIV), is the final concretization of the free choices made on earth, demonstrating that death crystallizes the human will in its definitive state, not having anymore space for merit or change of route when the curtain of the time closes.
This same eschatological warning echoes strongly in the lesson of the prophet Jeremiah, who exposes with precision the root of the failure of the wealthy man: "Cursed is the man who trusts in his fellow man and relies on a carnal arm". By closing himself in his self-sufficiency and separating his heart from the creaturely dependence on the Lord, the proud soul becomes similar to the tamarisk of the desert, sterile, dried out and entirely incapable of perceiving the true happiness. In absolute contrast, the faithful soul who daily begs the help of God in the Introit comprehends its vulnerability before the enemy ambushes and resembles the leafy tree planted next to the living waters, whose roots sip from the eternity. The dialogue of Abraham regarding the sending of a sign from the beyond underlines, in the light of this Epistle, that the ordinary revelation granted by God - configured in Moses and in the Prophets - carries sufficient light and grace for the conversion of any man. As Saint Augustine asserts, the obstinate incredulity does not dissolve with the spectacle of sensible miracles, because the heart that refuses to obey the already revealed Word will continue attached to its darknesses even if the sepulchers open before its eyes.
The profound connection between the urgency of the divine help supplicated in the Introit, the lethal danger of the carnal confidence diagnosed in the Epistle and the irrevocable justice revealed in the Gospel converges to a very clear truth: the time of mercy and of the edification of the soul is exclusively the present moment. We must not be frivolous to the point of demanding celestial prodigies to guide our morality, neither live accumulating temporal comforts with the voracity of who takes them as a definitive dwelling. The spiritual wisdom proper to Lent consists in allowing that the Lord searches our kidneys and hearts, purifying our vision so that we transform our earthly goods in solid bridges of active charity. Acting thus, we guarantee that, on the threshold of eternity, we do not awake in the flames of an inescapable abyss, but are sweetly carried by the Angels to the perpetual beatitude, where the God that we invoke hurriedly in our succor will be, forever, our endless reward.