“The poor man Lazarus died, and was taken away by the angels to be with Abraham.”
(Luke 16:22)

The angels take care of the poor man. He has suffered in his life because in life there is injustice and oppression and inequality and distress. The angels do all they can to help all those who on earth suffer in their bodies and in their souls as persons, as groups, as nations. Angels in the past went as far as to punish with the sword public oppressors and cruel tyrants. The angels always defend those who suffer, and take side with the downtrodden on earth.

And when life comes to an end and the poor go on to their kingdom, the angels hasten to come to their side, take charge of them, accompany them to the mansions in eternity. The poor are in good hands. The angels take Lazarus to be with Abraham. His sufferings are over.

I feel comforted to know that angels are waiting for me when I die and I am looking for my way in a new world. But for that to happen, I must be poor. To have angels waiting at the other shore is the poor person’s privilege. Poor at least in simplicity, in detachment, in identification with the poor, in feeling in heart and soul the poverty that afflicts the larger part of humankind, in denouncing it before the world and doing my best in my measure to bring an end to it.

Poverty brings the angels down. They discovered it in Bethlehem, followed it up in Nazareth, heard it from the lips of the one who had nowhere to lay his head, worshipped it in the Redeemer who died naked on a cross. Now they know how to identify his followers. They are the poor, the humble, the oppressed. It is Lazarus who begs and goes hungry at the door of a rich man. I am not going to live by alms or to faint before a closed door, but I at least want to take conscience that there are people who live and die in that way, that there is hunger and misery, injustice and suffering, sickness and death. All this is happening around me, in my time and in my world, in the real facts and in the images of my television, in far-away countries and in my own neighbourhood.

I don’t want to be the disinterested and despiteful rich man in the gold and the wine of his feasts. I want to feel in myself the pain and the closeness of my brothers and sisters who suffer in all the countries of the world, and to create conscience and join action for their relief. I thank the angels who wait for them, I ask them to help them here already to lead a better life and to get themselves respected and dealt with justly in their dignity; and then I humbly ask them that even if I don’t quite fit into the gospel description of the poor who felt poverty in his flesh, they may wait for me too at the other side to take me to safe harbour before I get lost in the labyrinths of eternity.