Vol.5 No.44 DoM Gospel Reflection
10 July 2016
Luke 10:25-37
F.r Anthony Wieck, S.J.
Who is my neighbor? These words reverberate throughout the entire Gospel this coming Sunday. Who is my neighbor? To the Jewish scholar of the law, the one well versed in these matters of definition, a likely response would be, “My neighbor is the one with whom I share religious affinity, the one who is not an offense against God, the one who worships rightly, the one who shares my heritage and is part of the chosen people. That one is my neighbor. My neighbor is not the foreigner from outside, nor the immigrant, certainly not my enemy. He is not the one who does not know the Lord or share what I believe, nor the one who hurts others by his actions. That one cannot be my neighbor.”
Jesus invites us Christians to answer the same question. How do we define neighbor? What would you say? Would we say perhaps, “My neighbor is the one who lives close to me…or the one with whom I share a common connection…or the one I help out on occasion when there is a need. That one is my neighbor.” This scholar of the law in the Gospel asks a very good question. And it just may be that he senses interiorly that there is something in his life that is not balanced, that perhaps his definition of neighbor is too restricted. And Jesus shows him gently that he is correct.
Jesus could have given a simple answer to the question of this scholar. But instead he recounts a long, heart-rending story about a man who has been stripped, beaten, and robbed. He appeals to the sense of compassion of his listener, and opens up his horizons thereby. In this story Jesus describes a man who is very imprudent, traveling alone from Jerusalem to Jericho, something that in that time was considered a great risk. It was a known fact that robbers would strategically place themselves off the side of the road and moan in pain to draw passersby to assist in their plight, and then take advantage of them and steal their possessions. How ought one respond to such a risk then? We see a Jewish priest walking down the road and calculating the danger of attending to the needs of someone who claims he is beaten up. The priest made a calculated decision to not enter into that risk. The Levite then comes along, the one born into the priestly tribe, just as all of us here are born in baptism into the common priesthood of the faithful in the Catholic Church. The Levite represents all of us. And he is not willing to risk either. He passes by on the other side of the road. That gesture of moving to the other side of the road is significant. Is it not interesting how sometimes you and I lower our head or our gaze when we are walking past someone, so as not to greet them if we don’t want to? We will pass by on the other side of the road if it all possible. Why do we do that? Is there a risk involved for us?
But then comes this Samaritan, the foreigner, the one who is not a native-born American or good Catholic. And he takes a risk when he sees a man half-dead in great need of care. He shares of his resources, and disinfects the wounds with the wine he carries, and pours precious oil upon these wounds to facilitate their healing, and bandages them up to keep infection from entering. These are the gestures of the sacrament of confession, we should note. And he puts the man on his own animal and brings him to an inn so that he can be cared for. He spends of his own resources. “Which man is the neighbor?” Jesus asks us. And the scholar in front of Jesus rightfully responds, “The one who treated him with mercy.” He was able to get beyond the man’s fault at taking such a silly risk and getting beat up. He was able to see the person on a deeper level than the obvious stupidity of his actions.
How would Jesus, then, respond to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” This story he tells, that appeals so deeply to our hearts, perhaps indicates that for Jesus, my neighbor is the one with whom I can empathize. My neighbor is the one whom I can see in a new way, a Godly way, once I get to know his or her story.
We could reflect here on the importance of having open hearts towards those who are in need, immigrants, refugees and exiles. But perhaps we can start even closer to home and ask, “Who is my neighbor in need close by in my life?” And here comes the greater challenge. Our neighbor includes the one with whom we struggle the most, even the one who perhaps has hurt me some time ago. If we ask the Lord for the grace of understanding, He will grant us in prayer a sense of the story or background of those we find difficult to forgive. He will share with us interiorly a bit of their story. He will grant us a sense of how those we struggle with act in ignorance to some degree, and He will lead us to make his heartfelt prayer on the cross our own, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In other words, they know not how much they are hurting me; they are ignorant, taking bad risks; they are hurtful to me. And even if they do know somewhat, they are still clueless. But as I now have, by your grace, a sense of the context of their lives, I can see that they are acting out of some negative experience. It does not justify their hurtful actions towards me, but does give them a context.
We are invited then, dear Daughters of Mary, to ask the Lord for the grace to know the story of another, especially the one with whom we struggle. And when we gain from the Lord a sense of that story, we will develop a heart like the Samaritan whom the Lord praises, who was able to focus on the woundedness of the one in need and not the fault. This Samaritan, this model of a human being, exercises mercy because he himself lives in mercy. Let us go now and do the same.
Author Info
