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15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
I am going to summarize the first lesson like this: We can play all the games we want trying to discern the will of God. We say, “I don’t know. I have no idea what the will of God is.” The truth is I do know. The truth is I don’t want to deal with it right now. I want to focus on the gospel today. We are given the parable of the Good Samaritan. There is so much to learn from this story. For Jesus to tell a story to Jews where the hero was a Samaritan was a shocker. In ancient times it was dangerous to travel alone because there were bandits everywhere. Even today people will travel together for protection when they travel through bandit country. The poor man was badly attacked. Then the fun starts. Then the story becomes scandalous. A priest and a Levite came by the scene but then they got out of there as soon as possible. I thought holy men and women should lead by example. We are scandalized that they refused to help this poor man. The truth is interesting. Devout Jews would be cautious to help in case the victim was a Gentile, in case the victim might be dead. In those instances intervention would make them ritually unclean. When you are totally focused on the perfect observance of the law that is a big deal. The hero of the story is the Samaritan. We remember that the Jews and the Samaritans did not get on. Their ancient grievance stemmed from the fact that the Jews considered that the Samaritans sold their souls to the Devil. This Samaritan man is a good decent man. He takes his time. He helps. He goes out of his way. He spends money to make things easier. He is given to us as a role model. I suspect we all fall short of this. Sometimes we hear these great stories on TV of people who went above and beyond to make a difference. They are an inspiration to us and we want to be like them. Then we kind of come back to ourselves and we turn back into the Priest and the Levite. Let someone else take care of it. I’m busy.
With love, Fr. Pat