Homily

Luke, in these ‘ordinary’ Sundays, does not depict the Lord’s journey towards Jerusalem as something abstract or distant from our lives - the Lord walks on human roads and travels down the streets of our world. According to the evangelist Matthew, Jesus "Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness" (9:35). Truly, as we read in Deuteronomy, the Gospel and Jesus himself, are "not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’" (30:12-13). The Lord Jesus is near, very near. His words are not distant; they are as concrete as life.
A doctor of the law asks Jesus who his neighbour is, but not because he wants to understand. Jesus answers him concretely. The doctor questions Jesus with lofty but true words, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (v. 25). Other people had already asked Jesus the same question, the young rich man, for example. But the heart of that doctor of the law is not sincere. When Jesus answers him about the primacy of the commandment to love, he tries to justify himself by asking, "And who is my neighbour?" (v. 29). As with the young rich man, Jesus does not answer with a speech that is beyond the heaven or across the sea. He begins by saying that, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers" (v. 30). He is talking about a road that everyone knows, and he tells of an incident that probably happened all the time: a man was robbed, beaten, and left half-dead on the side of the road. He is just one man, but in him we see the many others: men and women, big and small, old and young, who are left half dead on the sides of the roads of this world. Beside this man lie millions of refugees who flee from their homeland, people who are condemned to death and then isolated from the rest of society, entire nations crushed by war and abandoned on the margins of history, and all those who die of hunger, torture, violence, and neglect. It is quite a wide road. And as wide as the road is, there are as many priests and Levites who keep walking and passing by the poor on the other side. The Gospel remarks that the priest and the Levite were walking down "the same road", as if to say that the half-dead man was not so unknown or distant that they could not have noticed him. The poor are known to us now. They are talked about on television and in newspapers. They are not so far away anymore. And yet people seem lost in the fog of their sad habits and they usually pass by on the other side, headed off towards other concerns.
The priest and the Levite did not love anything other than themselves and their rituals. It is easy to imagine that they were headed to the temple and so could not "dirty their hands" with the wounded man. They knew that there were poor people in the world, and perhaps they had even helped some of the poor people who gathered around the temple. But they could not stop on the road. And who was that man, anyway? Maybe he was a foreigner who did not speak their language. How many reasons rise in the hearts and minds of those who pass by the poor. And they do not stop, because concern for self and safety always wins out. Self-absorbed people only think about themselves and live without any compassion for others. We all know from experience how easy it is for us to feel sorry for ourselves and how hard it is to feel sorry for others. The priest and the Levite were not moved, and the half-dead man was left alone. Luckily a Samaritan also passed by. When he saw the half-dead man he felt compassion for him, got off his horse, came up to him and treated his wounds and then brought him to an inn. Many generations of Christians have seen Jesus himself in the Samaritan who rebelled against the world’s indifference. We read that Jesus healed all those who needed healing, and had compassion on the tired and abandoned crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus is the compassionate one, in fact, "though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave" (Phil 2:6).
Jesus leaves his compassion as a legacy for the disciples of every age, including us. Like Jesus, we need to stop on the side of the roads of life and gather together those who need salvation. It is Jesus who, along the years of our story, has shown us the half-dead poor people along the roads we travel, and he is the one who has taught us to stop. It is Jesus who has opened our eyes so that we would not be turned in on ourselves, and it is Jesus who many times has brought the poor all the way to our doors so that we would welcome them. Yes, we too are the inn in the Gospel to which Jesus brings the half-dead man; the community of disciples is that inn. The Lord Jesus, the Good Samaritan, entrusts the half-dead, wounded, and exhausted man to us, the innkeepers of this inn. And every day he tells us: "Take care of him!" And that is not all. He also gives us two denarii. Yes, two denarii of Jesus’ compassion are enough to help, comfort, and heal the weak. And then he adds: "When I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend" (v. 35).
If more compassion is needed, Jesus himself will continue to give it to us: what counts is that we always be ready at the door, attentive to the Samaritan who comes and knocks. This is the meaning of our life in the world: we have to be like the inn in the Gospel, a school of compassion and love capable of welcoming and protecting the poor and the weak. By entrusting them to us, the Lord pulls us from the sad destiny of the priest and Levite, cold and sad men, and draws us into his love and invites us to share in the feast being held in the inn, the feast of the poor and weak who are welcomed by the Lord. This Sunday the Good Samaritan comes to us once again. He comes as a teacher of charity so that we may all learn to follow in his footsteps, open our hands to receive the two denarii, and open our hearts to live his compassion. And we will still clearly hear the Gospel’s invitation, "Go and do likewise!" (v. 37).