Order of Malta Mass (Kew Carmel)– 5 March 2026

Thursday of the Second Week of Lent: Jeremiah 17:5–10; Luke 16:19–31.

This evening’s readings place before us a stark and searching question:
Where is your heart?

The prophet Jeremiah gives us the image first:
“A curse on the man who puts his trust in man… whose heart turns from the Lord.”
But then comes the promise:
“A blessing on the man who puts his trust in the Lord… he is like a tree by the waterside.”

The difference is not simply between wealth and poverty, success and failure.
The difference is this: a heart closed in on itself, or a heart rooted in God.

The Gospel gives us the human face of that choice.

The rich man is not condemned because he is rich.
Scripture never says that. His sin is more subtle—and more frightening.

He does not see.

Lazarus lies at his gate: Not far away, not hidden, but at his very gate.

The rich man lives in a world so comfortable, so enclosed, that the suffering of another human being never really enters his heart.

His tragedy is not cruelty; it is indifference.

And indifference, in the Gospel, is a spiritual blindness.

This is why the charism of the Order of Malta shines so brightly in the life of the Church.

You are men and women of means, of influence, of education, and of capacity.
However, unlike the rich man in the Gospel, you choose to see. Your tradition speaks of “our Lords, the sick and the poor.” What a remarkable phrase.

The world says: serve the poor.
The Gospel says: recognise Christ in the poor.
The Order of Malta goes even further: honour them as your Lords.

Where the rich man of the Gospel saw a nuisance at his gate, you see a presence to be reverenced.

Where he saw a problem, you see a person.

Where he saw someone beneath him, you see someone above you. This is not charity alone. This is conversion of vision.

And this is where today’s first reading meets the Gospel.

Jeremiah says:
“The heart is more devious than any other thing… I, the Lord, search the heart.”

Lent is the season when God searches our hearts—not to condemn us, but to heal our vision.

The danger for all of us—especially those entrusted with resources, responsibility, and comfort—is not wealth itself. The danger is insulation.

The danger is the quiet formation of a life where suffering never really reaches us.

The rich man’s tragedy began long before his death.
It began the day Lazarus became invisible.

Dear members of the Order of Malta,

Your vocation is a powerful antidote to that blindness.

Each time you kneel before the poor, you are doing something profoundly evangelical.

You are placing yourselves on the right side of the gate.

You are choosing the side of Lazarus. And in doing so, you are choosing the side of Jesus Christ who said:
“Whatever you did to one of the least of these, you did to me.”

Again, this evening, it is a particular grace that the Carmelite Sisters are with us.

The Order of Malta serves Christ in the poor through action.
The Carmelites serve Christ in the world through prayer.

The are not two separate missions—they are one.

Your works of mercy are sustained by their hidden intercession. The sisters’ cloistered prayer gives spiritual depth and fruitfulness to your visible service.

Together, you remind the Church that the love of God must be both contemplated and lived, both prayed and practiced, both silent and active.

The tree planted by the waterside—the one Jeremiah speaks of—draws life from hidden roots.

The Carmelites tend the roots.
The Order of Malta bears the fruit.

The Gospel ended with a sobering warning:
“If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”

We who stand on this side of the Resurrection cannot say we have not been warned. We cannot say we have not been shown.

Christ is risen. And he waits for us—not only in glory, but at the gate: in the refugee, in the homeless, in the lonely elderly person, in the ones the world no longer notices.
The rich man asked that Lazarus be sent to his brothers. In our time, the Church does something better. The Church sends you.

And through your generosity, your presence, your reverence for “our Lords, the poor,” you proclaim a quiet but powerful truth:

The gate between heaven and earth is crossed whenever the poor are seen, honoured, and loved.

May this Lent deepen your vision.
May your hearts remain planted in the Lord.
And may the day come when the One you have served in the poor will say to you:

“Welcome home for you saw me, you served me, you loved me.”

Most Rev. Anthony J. Ireland
Archbishop of Hobart
5 March 2026