“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49).Of the many Sodomite sins, neglecting the poor and focusing on self angered the Lord more than any others.
I was driving through Johannesburg a few days ago with Father Eusebius, a monk newly arrived from Sopochani Monastery in Serbia, and he remarked on the homeless people selling newspapers for the homeless at robots, and the many poor people begging there.
“It is like the New Testament,” he said, “there are many Lazaruses, and many rich men passing by them every day.”
We were driving to teach at our Catechetical School in Yeoville, where three of the four students were former “street kids”, though they don’t like being called that. “A street never gave birth to a child,” one of them said.
So perhaps it is time to meditate and think about the Sin of Sodom a bit more.
2 Comments
5 November 2007 at 12:58 pm
I think the point you are implying is how we moralise, demonise and domesticate sin, so as to feel vindicated and avoid guilt.
To almost everyone, “Sodomy”, and by association the sin/s of Sodom, means something sexual, and most people (I guess) would feel let off the hook by keeping it that way.
We need to reappropriate words with their original meanings intact.
5 November 2007 at 7:50 pm
I have to agree with you. No more Samaritans. I have to add that we do not have time for the needy in life. We rather give money to someone else with the hope they will solve the problem and keep it away from our front door. We are becoming distant from our fellow man.
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