Dear Sir:

I hope you had a Merry Christmas. Forgive me but I cannot call you Emmanuel. That is the name of our Lord and I believe it is not proper for anyone else to be named Emmanuel.

In the story we see that Lazarus is partaking of the heavenly banquet. Thus, he is a "saint" (with a small "s") as only saints went to Abraham's Bosom and only saints go to heaven. St. Lazarus is also a Saint (with a capital "S") and is listed as a Saint, St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, in the Dictionary of Saints (compiled by John Delany) and other listings of Saints. His Feast Day is listed as June 21.

In the middle ages there was a greater devotion to St. Lazarus and an Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem was founded This order ministered to lepers. It was thought that the Lazarus was a leper.

St. Lazarus of Jerusalem was "pre-canon".  Many saints were considered saints, especially in the early centuries, by virtue of popular veneration instead of the canonical procedures we have today. Many of these popular venerated saints would not stand up to the scrutiny of today's sainthood process. Nevertheless, they are listed in the Canon and thus we may venerate them.

Popular ideas about St. Lazarus finds him a leper suggesting that his horrible disease may be why the rich man neglected him. I can see how the outcast would venerate St. Lazarus. However the real reason for the rich man's neglect of St. Lazarus was not that he was a leper. The story is not about the rejection of a sick and poor man. The story is about a man, Lazarus, who accepted his poverty virtuously and was rewarded; and a rich man who neglected the opportunities his wealth gave him for charity and was thus punished. The parable is about how we miss opportunities that God has given us. The rich man paid for his neglect of those opportunities. We should all heed the warning.

In both the popular context of Lazarus the neglected leper and the more accurate moral of the story of missed opportunities, I can see how a popular local devotion can be had of Lazarus in areas of extreme poverty contrasted by the harshness and injustice of those of wealth.

In St. Lazarus the poor find hope.

The reason the Church does not include St. Lazarus on the Roman Calendar is that we don't know for sure if he every existed. Many Catholic exegetes now commonly accept the story as a parable without any literal reality of a real person named Lazarus.

However, other Catholic exegetes think that St. Lazarus did exist since there is no Biblical evidence that the story is a mere parable. In parables Jesus did not name names. Here he specifically identifies the people by name. This is support that St. Lazarus did exist.

But, contrary to popular opinion, a Saint does not have to be on the Calendar to be venerated or his feast day celebrated. The Church only puts saints on the calendar who have universal significance and who we can reasonably be assured actually existed. Certainly there are not enough days on the calendar to list every saint.

St. Christopher, patron of Travelers, for example, was removed from the Roman Calendar for these reasons. But, he was not "de-sainted."

No saint is de-sainted by being removed from the Calendar or never placed on the Calendar. We may publicly venerate any Saint in the Canon of Saints (of which I think are some 11,000).

St. Lazarus is more venerated in the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches than here in the West.

You are fine to venerate St. Lazarus and to have his statue. Your priest is mistaken in his view.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary