Luke 16:24-31. The end of the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Jesus tells this story to the Pharisees, who were exalting themselves above others: A rich man would walk by a poor beggar, Lazarus, every day. The poor man wished only for the scraps from the rich man's table, but the rich man never even really saw Lazarus. One day, Lazarus died and was taken into heaven - to Abraham's bosom. Later, the rich man died and went to hell. While in torment there he could see Lazarus with Abraham a long way away in heaven and he begged Abraham to send Lazarus to him with some water. This is where my passage for today begins. Abraham says "Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things...  [b]esides... between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us." The rich man then asks Abraham to send Lazarus to give a warning to his still living brothers, but Abraham says no, they have Moses and the prophets,  they know what they should be doing. The man says if Lazarus came to them from the dead they would listen, but Abraham says no, not even that would convince them to change.

A lot of the reason I think I got this passage today is personal, I was praying this morning for discernment - asking whether or not I should attempt to reach out again to certain people. I think this was given to me as an answer. Without getting into all of that, I have thought a lot about this story and have written about it before. In the Novena of Surrender, Day 6, Jesus says "Satan tries to do exactly this: to agitate you and remove you from my protection and to throw you into the jaws of human initiative." In the margins of this I wrote "In the story of Lazarus and the rich man, Abraham says the chasm is to keep people on both sides from crossing. That is, some in heaven will feel pulled towards hell to help others. This is pride, really, relying on one's self, and on human initiative. Trust God! He knows how to help the people who would pull me from Jesus' protection, I do not."

Obviously none of us are yet in heaven or hell, so this is not 100% on point - I do have a duty to help people gain holiness to the extent that I can, and they have a duty to help me. We are all in this together. But, in order for people to be able to help each other be holy, they have to share holiness as a goal. When someone does not have that goal, and we try to pull them towards it, we can end up having our holiness diminished. We can be pulled away from our goal by spending too much time with a person who does not have heaven on his or her mind. They can (knowingly or unknowlingly) tempt us into a secular lifestyle or secular thinking. We become like the people we spend time with, and that can be dangerous for our holiness.

Thus, one lesson of this story is that we should not try to cross the chasm on our own initiative. No matter how much the person asks, God knows if they really have the desire to come over to the other side. If they do, he will give them the circumstances and situations in their lives that will help them get there. It may be that we will be a part of that, but also may not be. It is not for us to take it onto our own shoulders and try to save that person.