Attention as the Minimum of Mercy

by Fr Earl Allyson Valdez

Reflection  for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Amos 6:1A, 4-7 | Psalm 146| 1 Timothy 6:11-16 | Luke 16:19-31

Some years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic, the late Pope Francis talked about making the “empty days” of the lockdown purposeful, and the first thing that he said was that it should be a time for paying attention to those that we have taken for granted in our pre-pandemic lives: those who are close to us and those little gestures which affirm and communicate the depth of our relationships with each other. 

For all we know, this wasn’t just an unusual comment, as he has always talked about becoming aware of God’s presence in all aspects of our human experience, from the smallest to the greatest, and from our everyday habits to our grand dreams. In a way, he is saying that essential to the Christian life is our attention to our God, to people, and to the events of our lives in which we see the presence of the Lord. 

This Sunday’s gospel reading reminds us of this attention, but with a distinct emphasis on its relationship with mercy. In the parable that Jesus tells us today, one can say that what the rich man truly lacks is this kind of attention to the presence of people. His mind wanders somewhere else: his earthly riches and his daily meals. What he failed to notice, however, was that standing beside the abundance he experiences, there is a poor man who only needs a little bit from him. One can even note that Lazarus does not even beg from him or take advantage of the little that the rich man has; he just stands there, living off whatever he could get just to survive. But the rich man does not even give an ounce of attention to his poverty and suffering.

Eventually, it was this lack of attention that condemned the rich man to hell, and one can even say that this lack of attention was itself the huge distance that separated him from God, inasmuch as it has already established that same distance between himself and Lazarus.

This week, Our Lord calls us to reflect on what we pay attention to, and whether we pay attention to the presence of others, even before asking what they need or what we can provide. And this is a poignant reminder for us who live in a world in which attention comes as a currency, in which technology directs us to the things that we pay attention to, and at times, we let ourselves to things that are less important and less significant. 

We need not go farther from our everyday lives. Sometimes, our attention is so focused on our personal problems and preoccupations, that we do not see their solutions which can be found in our personal relationships and our own values. When tackling social issues and problems, we would rather pay attention to our allegiance to personalities instead of the issues at hand. We would rather pay attention to what we only believe to be so, rather than to what others can teach us. In the end, we prefer to pay attention on what we tell and believe ourselves, rather than to what God shows us and teaches us today. 

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a lesson on attention, telling us that to be truly merciful and compassionate, one has to be first attentive. We ask the Lord the grace to “refine” our senses and allow us to be more attentive to the things that matter, most especially the presence of others in our lives.