A couple people asked it I could share this past Sunday's homily on the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.
The homilies that the Church Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries gave on the Lazarus parable form the backbone of the Christian doctrine about care for the poor, along with their reflections on the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 25, and well...most of Luke's gospel.
And yet, the vast majority of the faithful today have never heard even one of their very plainly spoken quotes. Nothing. I hadn't, even as a cradle Catholic who attended 8 years of seminary.
This homily is basically like ten quotes from the Doctors of the Church (men of the world, bishops of large prosperous cities) strung together by me saying "Holy cow. That's intense! Have you ever heard this before?"
If you want to see a written transcript of this homily, go to this previous post and scroll down to the third section. I literally printed that out on Sunday and used it for my text with minimal updates.
And at the bottom of that post is a select bibliography of all these quotes and sometimes even whole sermons, available on the web.
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