CELEBRATE SUNDAY
WITH ST. MARY'S
FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Love is best shown through self-giving.
FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
As Christ taught parables during his public ministry, he did so not to simplify his message so that it might be easier to understand, but to reveal the truth about his purpose for coming. In this revelation through stories, he also conceals just enough so that we might ponder, even two thousand years later, what we must do according to the faith that has formed us thus far. In this Sunday’s Gospel, we hear one of his best known parables, that of the Good Samaritan. So well known is this lesson of Christ that we might ignore its historical context and its subtle details simply because we think we already know it so well. As you listen to the Gospel at Mass this Sunday, contemplate those details, pull out those things you never considered before, and see what the message of Christ is for your own individual faith journey.
READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE
Simply, Christ’s message in sharing this parable is an answer to the scholar of the Law: God desires to be worshipped. But how do we worship Him? This scholar of the Law was ultimately testing the authority of Jesus because he, who had dedicated his life to the study of God’s desire, was being taught by a man seemingly without those same qualifications. But this scholar provides for Jesus the absolute foundation for worshipping God, which is expressed by following the Law: love God entirely, and love your neighbor entirely. In a Christian world, we can easily identify anyone other than ourselves as our neighbors, even those who might disagree with us or live on the other side of the world. But at the time of Christ, this identification was incredibly novel; your neighbor at that moment of history was the person who you lived with in your community. You loved your neighbor because their well-being directly affected your well-being, while any foreign enemy threatened you both. But when Christ is teaching the identity of one’s neighbor through the parable, he offers a scene more difficult than we might recognize in the present age. The man beaten by robbers was in need, but the language suggests that the priest who passes him is going towards Jerusalem; this means, he was going to perform his priestly duties at the Temple. If he helps the man, he would become ritually unclean and would not be able to follow the Law. The Levite, a member of the priestly tribe, is in the same situation. We should not cast these two men as the antagonists of the story, but consider that they perhaps felt helping a bloodied man would hinder them from obeying God’s Law in Jerusalem.
Jews hated Samaritans. No modern political analogy would be adequate in this context to describe the animosity between these two groups, so instead, consider the people you most despise in your own life. Read them into this story. The Samaritan might be free from the ramifications of becoming ritually unclean in helping the man, but he takes on a different risk: by taking this beaten Jew to an inn to be cared for, he is risking that others along the way might consider him to be the one who beat the man. If this misunderstanding did occur, the Samaritan could have been put to death. He did it anyway. The scholar who initially challenges Christ identifies this as pure mercy. Mercy is divine, and if we ought to consider how God wants to be worshipped, we ought to consider liturgy through the lens of mercy. Who is Christ in this parable? Perhaps he is the beaten man who is requesting aid and is being denied by his own people. Or, perhaps he is the Samaritan, taking upon himself all of the risk merely to show his love for someone who might otherwise hate him and be the cause of his own death. The priest and the Levite avoided the man because they desired to show their love of God through their duties in Jerusalem while in a pure state. We cannot judge this decision. But even a scholar of the Law knows that loving our neighbor is part of loving God and obeying His Law. And love is best shown through charity and mercy to those who are most in need. How do we worship God? We show mercy. We obey Christ’s clear teaching, to go like the Samaritan and do likewise.
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