The places where pagan rites were performed had become so dear to the people that the prophecy compares the people's attitude toward them with their attitude toward their own sons. But sons are those who are to inherit everything their parents have; meanwhile, what the parents possess has been received from the Lord. It turns out that they intend to hand His gifts over to false gods, hateful to Him. Such actions are already more than turning away from the Lord: they are the defilement of the gifts of His love.

Hearing the warning that those who turn away from God will be written on the dust, we remember His words spoken to the first human being after he first turned away from Him: dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Dust will be scattered by the wind, and no trace of it will be found; all that apostates hope in will turn to dust. We also remember how Jesus wrote on the ground - on that same dust - in the moments when the accusers brought a sinful woman to Him. These episodes of the Old and New Testaments are interconnected, and what was written on the dust reminded sinners of their own wrongs.

But again the prophet reminds us that sinners are given the possibility of correcting their ways. Through the prophet, the Lord calls them to remember the Sabbath day, and in this context that means something more than simply observing an established tradition: it means dedicating oneself completely and one's whole life to the Lord, just as the seventh day is dedicated to Him.

The Gospel says little about what "life after life" is like, and most likely this silence is due to the fact that the road to heaven passes over the earth, where we are to live according to our calling. But here before us is a story that slightly opens the mysterious veil. Even here, however, the focus of our attention is not the details of existence beyond the grave, which are mentioned briefly, but the meaning of the story as applied to our life.

And so we see how a man who thoughtlessly lived for his own pleasure ends up in hell because he has already received everything in earthly life. One might ask, what wrong did he do? True, he did not feed Lazarus, who was lying by the house like a filthy homeless man, but after all, one cannot feed everyone. Nothing else bad is said about this rich man; it is not mentioned that he robbed or murdered anyone. Why, then, did he end up in hell?

It must not be "for what," but "why": not because he enjoyed earthly pleasures, but because they blocked God from his sight. Just as the same substances can, depending on dosage and proportions, be either medicine or poison, so the gifts the Lord created to satisfy our needs can become destructive if because of them we stop noticing the Creator.

And this story also contains an important prophecy: if people do not listen to well-known prophetic words, they will not believe even the One who rises from the dead. To this day, it is difficult for those who hope for endless life amid earthly luxury to believe the Risen One. But when He descended into hell, He overcame the great chasm that until then could not be crossed.

Today's Old Testament reading says that the one who withdraws from God will not see when good comes. And although this is a common biblical figure of speech meaning that no good will come at all, what matters for us here is that this is connected with a person's personal choice. When we withdraw from the Lord, we go into the wilderness. When we turn away from Him, we refuse to see the good. A person who chooses the way of unrighteousness plugs his ears and closes his eyes - and therefore does not hear the Good News.

A person who hopes in God gains an inexhaustible spring of life. No external, and not even internal, circumstances (for drought often happens in our hearts too) can deprive us of the living water that the Lord gives.

But the most interesting thing is that both parts of this passage apply to us. None of us can say that we have never, even for a moment, relied on flesh, that is, on purely human, worldly wisdom, which the apostle Paul called foolishness before God (1 Cor. 3:19). At the same time, each of us has been given the living water of the Lord's love, and every Christian has experience of drought endured in the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding. So both indifference and the freedom of the glory of the children of God are realities of our life. And every day, every minute, is an opportunity to choose: what or Whom am I hoping in?