Treasures of the Church

Thinking about the treasures of the Church in the last post, the quip of St Laurence the martyr to the Roman emperor comes to mind: that it is the poor who are the treasures of the Church.  It provides us with an interesting way in which to look at the Gospel for today, that of Dives and Lazarus.  You would have to wonder about it as you see poor Lazarus starving outside the mansion of a rich man with the dogs getting ready to devour him.  Of course Lazarus does get his reward in the bosom of Abraham, but his life on earth was hard and unjust.  Perhaps we could say that the rich man, for all his wealth, in his blindness also failed to see the real treasure in his life - the poor man who should have been cherished and fed, loved and cared for, because in that poor man God himself was present and reaching out to him.  In feeding Lazarus, in clothing him and caring for him, the rich man would have been serving God himself.  So I suppose St Laurence can teach us to see in the poor around us as pearls of great price, real treasures, and that in serving them we become truly rich.