Fifteenth Ordinary Sunday

[cappie]

When we leave our familiar world and enter into the world of this Sunday’s parable, we find ourselves walking along the road to Jericho.  We stand beside the Samaritan and wonder if we would act the same way. Would we stop to help an enemy? Could we reach out and touch a bleeding stranger? Do we have the courage to help the victim of a violent crime, knowing that the criminal might be waiting for us?   

Or are we more like the Levite and the Priest? Busy with our own interests, frightened of the unknown, wary of getting involved, eager to return to safety? No matter how we view ourselves, we always seem to connect with either the Good Samaritan who helps, or the Bad Levite, who doesn’t.  We can stop, or we can pass by on the other side. We can act, or we can ignore. We can be proud of our response, or we can feel ashamed. But either way, we have choices…and power.  

What if God is trying to teach us that mercy comes when we are so weak we can no longer resist? What if God wants us to know that grace and love are poured out when we have no choice but to accept? What if God is challenging us to be brave enough…open enough… to be used as an instrument  What if God is inviting us to become, not just the Samaritan, but the innkeeper and the wounded one in the ditch?  

Like all parables, this story is more complex than it first appears. Like all good stories, it invites us  to explore, and most of all, to be surprised at what we discover when we reflect on the question, “Who is your neighbour?”  
 
Even people who know little or nothing about the Gospels seem to know the story, or at least they know the term "good Samaritan." They know it refers to a person who goes out of his or her way to help someone in need.
 
 This Good Samaritan assisted the victim left for dead on the side of the road, while the two individuals, who walked the road before him, saw the robbery victim and did nothing. They just continued on their way, perhaps out of fear of becoming victims themselves if the attackers were nearby or perhaps to avoid becoming ritually impure by touching the victim.
 
Everyone familiar with the story knows the point. We have to be like the Good Samaritan. We have to offer assistance to those in need for they are the neighbours we are called to love.
 
However, there is another way to see this Gospel parable, one that Pope Benedict XVI spoke of during a prayer service with the Bishops of Latin America in March of 2012. The Pope said, "The Church must relive and make present what Jesus was: the Good Samaritan who came from afar, entered our human history, lifted us up and sought to heal us."
 
With that understanding, it is Jesus, not any of us, who is the Good Samaritan. We are the victim whose life is draining away by the edge of the road.
 
We are those beaten down by our failings, by our selfish acts, by our failures to live as the good and holy people we promised to be. We are those robbed of our dignity as children of God by evil and sin. We are struggling on the road of life, unable to help ourselves. Laws, rituals, and self-help programs offer hope but they do nothing to raise us up.
 
It is the Son of God who comes to our rescue. He takes on flesh, and walks the road of life that we travel. When he sees us, he lifts us up. He forgives our sins, he heals our wounds, and he takes us to the inn, he takes us to his Church, where we can continue to be healed and made whole.
 
While it may be nice to picture ourselves as the Good Samaritan, as the hero of the parable, that is not the case. Jesus is the hero. Jesus is the Saviour. Jesus is the Good Samaritan who has come to our rescue. 
 
 Christ told his questioner in today's Gospel that if he will "Go and do likewise," if he will be like the Good Samaritan, he "will live."

Secondly, the best way to implement Christ's simple formula is to decide right now, enlightened by the example of this parable and strengthened by the Holy Communion we are about to receive, that when we run across someone in need this week, we will lend them a hand.

Whether friend or stranger, whether the need is material or spiritual, let's promise Jesus today that at least this week we will not just walk by on the other side of the street, but instead we will "Go and do likewise."

If we do, Jesus promises us, we will live.

In speaking of this parable in a General Audience of April 27, 2016, Pope Francis notes the reversal of the question, and urges us: "Do not stand by classifying others by sight who is my neighbour and who is not. You can become neighbour to any needy person you meet, and you will know that you have compassion in your heart, that is, whether you have the capacity to suffer with the other." This means, the Pope says, "compromising oneself, taking all the necessary steps so as to approach the other to the point of identifying with him: 'you shall love your neighbour as yourself.' This is the Lord's commandment."
           
This ability to see my neighbour as myself is at the heart of our compassion as followers of Jesus. It allows us to see our unity with all  which has been brought together in Jesus' name, to the glory of God.

[Guest]

Thank you again, Father.