Earlier in the week as I was driving to Villanova along Route 320, a reporter on KYW quoted a Reuters press report that members of the nation’s special forces had been making incursions into and out of Afghanistan over the past two weeks. My mind wandered as I thought about the members of the special forces who were involved in what we've been told are preliminary tactics in what is to be a very long, drawn out, and potentially menacing "new type" of war where there will be---as there already been---thousands of causalities, not only abroad but also in the homeland. It's all so vivid how, within a mere forty minutes, it wasn’t other people in remote lands whose lives were being threatened by warfare. No, it was our lives and lifestyle that were standing in harm’s way.

I asked myself, "Why would people devote themselves to defending my life and my lifestyle somewhere on the other side of the globe?" After all, no one has been drafted to serve in the nation’s armed forces since the early 1970s. In fact, every soldier---some of whom grew up in our parish---is a volunteer.

As my mind continued to wander, I also remembered an Army private interviewed on CNN last week as his battalion was preparing to leave Fort Hood in Texas for assignment somewhere in the region surrounding Afghanistan. In a thick Texas drawl I recall well from my years in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he said, "Our enemy had better recognize that the meanest dawg on the porch is coming after them." Perhaps this private’s bravado masked his fear, the understandable fear anyone feels when walking into an unknown future where death---even if it’s not one’s own death---is almost certain. As this soldier was preparing to leave mother and father, brother and sister, wife, children, and, in fact, every possession behind, he did not utter one word of fear or regret. I’m absolutely certain that his grandmother and grandfather, mother and father, sisters and brothers, wife and kids, relatives, friends, and minister---and all of us, too---worry about what awaits this soldier and his battalion. And, as I look around church at our teenagers, I find myself wondering now about the future awaiting them and whether they’re absorbing the lessons their parents are teaching them---at least, I hope they're teaching their children---about love of God, family, and country. These are the lessons, in times of tumult and strife, that stir human beings to greatness.  "Are these kids ready?" I ask myself.

In the midst of these wonderments, I also thought about how, while our special forces are being ordered around over there, I can do practically anything I want here. While they’re surviving on rations, I can eat three squares each day. And, while they’re placing themselves squarely in harm’s way, I’m free to puzzle over when and where the next terrorist strike will occur. And so, I found myself pondering what would motivate men and women to devote themselves---to the point of willingly sacrificing one’s life---to preserve my life and lifestyle.

My conclusion is not terribly profound. Namely, these men and women willingly sacrifice themselves because they are motivated by a fundamental belief in the existence of God and the inalienable rights that God has endowed each of us with. In light of these higher, enduring, and ultimate moral values, everything else---in fact, every one of our material possessions---pales in comparison.

The same holds true, I hope and pray, for many of us. Motivated by a fundamental belief in the existence of God and the inalienable rights that God has endowed each of us with, many husbands and wives willingly lay down their lives for the common good of their marriage and their family’s life. These spouses don’t let what they "want" get in the way of what they "need" to be and to do for their beloved. Religious sisters and brothers and priests---although our numbers are dwindling rapidly---willingly sacrifice themselves for the common good of the faith community. And, lest we forget, there are many single lay persons who also offer their lives in many unheralded forms of service for others. All of these are the people who teach our kids, who nurse our sick, who provide for the needs of the elderly and poor, and who visit the infirmed and bury the dead. They are the policemen, firemen, and EMTs who willingly placed their lives in harm’s way on September 11th.

Like the members of the Army’s special forces, these men and women train each and every day so that they will be capable of responding to God’s call when God places Lazarus on their doorsteps of their lives. Oftentimes, people---especially teenagers---will ask me, "How could anyone want to be a priest?" After listening to how spouses sometimes talk about one another, I wonder, "Why would anyone want to be married?" But, then, why would anyone run into a crumbling skyscraper? What all of these men and women do---absent higher, enduring, and ultimate moral values---is otherwise inexplicable. Whether it’s fasting and abstaining from anything that would deter them from being capable of fulfilling their duty or turning away from anything that would distract them from achieving their goal, ordinary people strive to do what moral virtue dictates because they are motivated by a sincere belief in God and His Providence. The end these ordinary people seek isn’t found in the riches afforded by this world, but instead in the promise of eternal happiness that is to be found in God.

That is the message Jesus teaches through the parable about the rich man and Lazarus.  Here’s this rich dude, dressed in the finest of garments and who dines sumptuously each day. He is the envy of everyone. But, growing increasingly complacent in his comfort and enjoying the finest things that life has to offer, the rich man doesn’t offer Lazarus the scraps that fell from his table. That the rich man did not give a whit for the poor was sinful enough.  That we don’t respond to the call of God as he places the genuine needs of others on our doorsteps is also sinful enough.

More significantly, however, the rich man didn’t notice what God had placed on his doorstep. Caring more about his own comfort, the rich man didn’t notice a human being whose sores the dogs fed on. Focused solely upon himself and getting more of what he wanted, the rich man did not recognize what he needed to do recognize, that is, the genuine human needs of the poor man, Lazarus. Instead, as the rich man fed his many wants, he became increasingly complacent and arrogant. Paraphrasing the prophet Amos in today's first reading, the rich man---and all of us too---have been warned: "Woe to the complacent! Lying upon your beds of ivory, stretched comfortably on your couches, you eat tender lamb taken from the flock and the finest veal taken from the stall…You drink wine not in cups but from bowls and anoint yourselves with the finest Oil of Olay; yet, you are not made sick by the collapse of morality."

According to the measure of our material possessions, God has abundantly blessed us as a nation. There is no doubt about it: our material possessions make us the envy of the world. Even the poor in our midst have material possessions that the poor in other countries only dream about. But, Amos challenges us, at what price have we acquired all of these material possessions? If it is at the price of increasing complacency and arrogance, where we do not uphold God's moral standards, scripture indicates that we will wake up one day finding ourselves no better off than the rich man. Discovering that he was not where he deluded himself into believing he would find himself on the other side of death---in the heavenly paradise---the rich man would spend eternity suffering the torments of the netherworld.

In light of the act of war that befell our nation on September 11th, that beautiful fall day when thousands of our fellow citizens met their eternal destiny, many of us realized that all of our material possessions---what many in the world envy---pale in comparison to the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that God endows human beings with. These are the moral values that must motivate us if we are to be a holy people of God and a beacon for humanity. The events of September 11th confront us with the challenge to turn away from the crass materialism and secularism which blinds us to the message of Moses and the prophets and renders us incapable of persuasion, "even if someone should rise from the dead." How many of us know, for example, that for more than fifteen years, Pope John Paul II has cautioned us---the citizens of the United States---about the temptations to materialism and secularism which he sees threatening the fabric of our nation’s soul?

Our challenge is to evaluate once again what is of true worth in our lives, our marriages, and our families. Our challenge is to commit ourselves once again to making that the authentic standard of judgment, just as the members of the nation’s special forces are showing us by their heroic example.

Lest we forget, God did not condemn the rich man to torment in the eternal netherworld. No, all along the way to his perdition, the rich man freely willed the choices that would determine his eternal destiny. Seeking his comfort in the riches of this world---his unfettered desire for the "bigger and better" and his vain search for "the best"---the rich man failed to notice what God had placed on his doorstep. Casting his lot with what he wanted, the rich man chose impoverishment in the eternal netherworld. Had the rich man noticed what he needed to see and done what he needed to do, the rich man would have shared in the riches of God’s eternity.