Homily for Monday, 6 October 2014– Ferial

Monday of the 27th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of St. Bruno

Readings of the day: Galatians 1:6-12; Psalm 111:1b-2, 7-8, 9, 10c; Luke 10:25-37

Are we not familiar with the centerpiece of the Jewish Law of the Old Testament: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself”? Thanks to Jesus or, in the case of Luke’s Gospel the “scholar of the Law” who answers his own question as to which law is central to inheriting “eternal life,” this law is also the centerpiece of our own Christian way of life. “Do this and you will live,” Jesus says to the lawyer.

But how deeply do we understand and put into practice what this law of love of God and of neighbor, and Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan that follows it, invite us to live out?

Do not most of us center Jesus’ parable today on the Samaritan who rescues the man robbed and left for dead on the Jerusalem-Jericho road? There is nothing wrong with this interpretation. After all, this parable is called the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is easy to assume that the Samaritan is the main character in this story.

But what if we were to place ourselves in this story as another character, say, the person robbed, beaten, and left for dead on his way “from Jerusalem to Jericho”? The priest and the Levite pass by without helping the wounded man on the side of the road. Were they concerned about ritual purity under the Jewish law or simply too busy; inattentive? Either way, Jesus does not fault them for failing to help the wounded man.

Yes, the Samaritan does stop to help the man. He becomes the unlikely hero of the parable by bandaging the man, pouring “oil and wine over his wounds,” and taking him “on his own animal” to an inn to recuperate. But what about the wounded man: Is he not also an example of living the law of loving God and neighbor as self?

The wounded man could well have refused the help of the Samaritan, hated enemy to Jews at the time. The Jerusalem-Jericho road was well-traveled. Without doubt someone else, probably Jewish, would have been along to help him, with concern for ritual purity being minor at best; an aside to this story. This is how a Jewish hearer of Jesus’ time would have heard this parable.

The surprise in this parable is less that a Samaritan, the enemy, helps than that the wounded (presumably Jewish) man would accept the Samaritan’s help. He, too, is an example (I say this parable’s main example) of love of neighbor as self, and so he shows love of God by accepting the care of the Samaritan.

How well do we humbly accept the help; the kindness; the love of others, especially those with whom we might have trouble getting along? Do we love in a way that makes ourselves vulnerable; without questioning whether the other has ulterior motives in being kind to us? From the wounded man’s perspective, this may be at the core of Jesus’ teaching: “Do this and you will live.”