Called to be good samaritans, saved by THE GOOD SAMARITAN

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

We begin today with a very striking and important question, a question put to Jesus in our Gospel, a question that we should allow to penetrate our hearts, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” God is love, and eternal life is to be rooted and grounded in that love, to be fully in God’s presence for ever. What must each of us do to find lasting peace and happiness, in this life and the next? How do we survive? How are we to flourish? Apply this question to the concrete details of your life… What must I do to love my wife and children? What must I do to love my husband? What must I do to love my parents and my grandparents? What must I do to love my co-worker and my neighbor?

Jesus directs the man’s attention to the Law, and he gives Jesus a common summary: to follow God’s Law means to love Him completely, and our neighbor as ourselves. These are the scholar of the law’s words, and so we discover that this summary was already known, already circulating. Thus far we do not have anything uniquely or distinctly Christian, but rather our common and shared Judeo-Christian heritage. Jesus affirms the man’s answer: “Do this and you will live.” Love God, love your neighbor, and you will have eternal life. Our psalm extols the beauty of God’s law, which brings not only survival, but also sweetness: God’s law is “more precious than gold, than a heap of purest gold; sweeter also than syrup or honey from the comb.”

Our conscience shows us this path to sweet peace and precious joy; our conscience is a thorn in our side when we walk another path, when we choose what is evil or reject what is good. If we shape and form our conscience in God’s law, we become more and more capable of discerning the path of peace and joy, the path that leads us to eternal life.

God’s law leads us to peace and authentic joy even and perhaps especially when it runs counter to the current and to the crowd. God’s law warns us away from killing the unborn and the elderly when they are inconvenient to us. God’s law points us toward the difficult love of being faithful in marriage or in celibacy. God’s law honors the goodness of our sexual desires when they are channeled towards faithfulness in marriage, and away from pornography or fornication or adultery. God’s law affirms the natural truth that marriage is between one man and one woman for life. God’s law indicates that we must defend the poor and the downtrodden, and offer hospitality to the stranger and the immigrant.

We share these convictions with the Jewish people who are faithful to the Old Testament. All this is present in our Gospel, but here is also something unique, something that goes beyond God’s revelation to the People of Israel. The scholar wants to have the last word, and he wants to turn the table on Jesus, so he asks, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan. There is a sting here that is not immediately evident to us. For Jesus’ Jewish listeners, to speak of the Samaritans was to refer to a group to whom they were related by blood, but also a group to whom they were related by violence and bloodshed. The Jews and Samaritans had tried to destroy each other’s Temples several times, sometimes with success. They hated each other and considered the other side as having abandoned God’s law. For us, it would be something like referring a Ku Klux Klan member, or a child pornographer, or an abortionist, a person whose way of life is abhorrent. Imagine the internal turmoil caused for the listeners when this man is the one who does what is right, who offers care and healing to the man left for dead by the robbers! I hope that each of you here has heard this parable before, and I hope that you have examined your heart in light of it… do you extend love and concern to those around you, even at personal cost to yourself? Are first things first in your life? Whoever is at hand and in need is our neighbor, and the path to eternal life passes through our charity to them.

There is, however, another angle from which to approach this parable, a way to allow Jesus’ words to shed light in another direction! The man was going from God’s city down to the plain of Jericho, which had often been associated with sin and destruction, and he was beset by robbers, by forces beyond his power to vanquish. He was left beaten, stripped, and abandoned. The Church Fathers saw in this man an image of the human race: by original sin, and by our own personal sins, we turn our back on God’s Law, God’s City, God’s life, and we end up stripped of our dignity, beaten by the enemy, and lured into decisions and choices that bring about our ruin. In the midst of our sin, our brokenness, our defeat, we are often in a spiritual state approaching death, down in the ditch, bleeding.

Who comes to save us, who risks His own life for us? It is Jesus-He took upon Himself our flesh, and the burden of our sins, He lifted us up out of the ditch. Jesus disregards the cost to Himself, His Passion on the Cross. He disregards shame and opprobrium and slaps in the face, the cross on His back and the nails through His hands and feet. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior not only disregards the lance that pierced His side, but from His wounded side there flowed out blood and water, the Eucharist and Baptism, and all the sacramental graces we are offered.

By all means let us examine our consciences as we hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan, let us ask the necessary and important question, “Am I loving as I should?” It is, however, essential that we also remember and deepen our awareness that it is Jesus who rescues us out of the wreckage of our brokenness, Jesus pours out the oil of gladness onto our wounds caused by our own sin and the sin of others. Jesus carries us to the place of healing, the inn, God’s house, the Church. Gazing upon our own lukewarm love, our tepid hearts, we might well have every reason to despair. Gazing upon our Savior, Jesus Christ, gazing upon the sacrifice He made for us, gazing upon this altar where He once again comes to us now, then we have every reason to hope!

St. Paul tells us in our second reading that Jesus is everything!

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together… For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether those on earth or those in heaven.

May Jesus, who holds all things together, hold us together, and by the power of His Cross & Resurrection, bring us to eternal life!

+ J. M. J. +