Who is Our
Neighbor?
By the time Jesus was
born, Jews and Samaritans had hated one another for hundreds of years. There
were Jewish towns and Samaritan towns. Each group believed only they held the
right way of worshiping God, even though they had a common history prior to the
exile. Arrogance and disdain kept these two groups apart from each other, for
the most part. Therefore, Jews were neighbors to Jews, and Samaritans were
neighbors to Samaritans.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, a
scholar of the law wants to know who his neighbors are, so he can fulfill the
commandment to love his neighbor as himself. Perhaps he expected Jesus to tell
him to get to know those around him, but instead Jesus provides an answer from
left field, praising a Samaritan. No Jewish man would ever praise a Samaritan
person because of the great prejudice against them.
When I used to volunteer
at Catholic Charities years ago, a line I heard Bob Moser say was: “We don’t
help others because they’re Catholic, we help them because We are.”
If Jesus had lived in
America in the 1950’s, instead of a Samaritan, Jesus would have told the same
story, but instead of a Samaritan, the helper would have been a Communist:
"the Good Communist." Who would be considered a Samaritan in our
society today?
When the Samaritan saw the
man lying by the side of the road, he “was moved with compassion.” The others
had no compassion; they were indifferent to the suffering of the wounded man
lying on the road. With this parable Jesus is not only teaching us that indifference
runs contrary to being a neighbor, but also that compassion transcends ethnic
and religious lines, and any kind of dividing line we create.
God bless, Fr. Carlos, OS
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