TV Mass Homily 7/14/2019

If you were driving along one of our beautiful country highways, maneuvering the twist and turns, the rises and the valleys, and you saw a car stopped along the side of the road with its hood up or lights flashing, would you stop? If you saw a man slumped along the side of the road, would you stop? Of course each of us ought to use the virtue of prudence in such situations and there are ways to report such realities and allow them to be dealt with in a safe and professional way.
However, not all those in need so apparent are along the side of a highway. Rather they are along the roadside of our lives – at home, at work, in our families, in our Church. They include the lonely, those aching in spirit as well as body, those who yearn to know that God loves them. We can be God’s instruments of love and hop for them.
The lawyer in the Gospel reading asked Jesus two questions. Notice that Jesus did not answer either of them directly. Rather he invited the man to reflect and therefore learn for himself.
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus was asked. ‘What does Scripture say’, Jesus answered. The response was ‘to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself’. ‘Do that and you will have life’, Jesus assured the man. ‘But who is my neighbor?’ was the second question. Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Loving the Lord our God may seem easy compared to the challenge to love our neighbor if we define neighbor as broadly as Jesus does. We tend to limit those we would consider our neighbor to those with whom we are comfortable. But Jesus teaches that our neighbor is not simply someone we know, or someone who looks or acts like us. Our neighbor is everyone gifted by God with life, especially those in need.
There is the temptation to separate ourselves from those who are different from us in racial or ethnic background, in language or culture, in education or work. This is an especially important note as we as a nation and Church consider the complex issues of immigration, legal and not.
To love neighbor as ourselves requires that we respect all life and acknowledge that every person from natural conception to natural death is our neighbor as Jesus defines it; including those we have a hard time liking. We show our love of God by loving our brothers and sisters. It is not a smaltzy love that overlooks sin. They and we have weaknesses. They and we make mistakes and sin. They and we may be different in many ways. But they and we remain neighbors because God the Father is the creator of us all, Jesus Christ is the savior of us all, and the Holy Spirit is the guide and comforter of us all.
Loving neighbors is not limited to the tough national issues of our day. We can love neighbor as ourselves and therefore be good Samaritans in the little things as well, including before tragedy occurs. Permit me a silly example.
Those of you who grew up in the 1950’s might recall that the local movie theatres on Saturday afternoons would have special entertainment for kids before showing the Roy Rogers and Gene Autry cowboy movies. One time there was a pig’s dinner contest. I was selected as a contestant. A pig’s dinner was ten scoops of ice cream covered with all kinds of toppings, fruit, nuts, and so forth. The winner was the one who ate this “dinner” the fastest. The prize was a certificate for multiple banana splits, a coveted prize for a young boy. I won. After the short glow of victory, I felt a severe headache, a queasy stomach. I could not stay for the movie. I could have used a Good Samaritan to advise me against such a dumb thing, anticipating the consequences of my actions. Our youth need Good Samaritans – people who notice and care about them, who to enter into their lives seeking to advise them of the consequences of drugs and other temptations, but who also pick them up should they fall.
We also love others by actively treating all as worthy including those some see as lacking in value. I recall reading some years ago about a doctor during the Vietnam War who performed many hours of surgery on a soldier whose legs and eyes were already damaged. Some other doctors criticized him for wasting time and resources on a person who would lead a life of misery. He was not worth it. Over twenty years later the doctor met his patient. Of course he was still blind and disabled. But he was also married with two children and living a productive life. Not all reaching out is as uplifting, but it is not for us to judge the future, our role as Christians is to love others and we would hope others would respond to us. In the parable Jesus did not reveal whether the injured man survived. That was not the point. The point was in any moment of personal encounter we can love God by loving our neighbor as best we can and then let God’s will be done.
A priest, a Levite and a foreigner saw the man in need across the road. Someone wrote that the difference among them was that the priest and the Levite asked when seeing the person in need, if I respond to him what will this do to me. The Samaritan asked if I do not respond to him what will happen to him.
The early Fathers of the Church saw the fallen man on the roadside as Adam. They saw in the Good Samaritan our Lord Jesus Christ who moved by compassion for the fallen came down to attend to humanity’s wounds, taking them upon himself. If God so loved us, should we not seek to love one another not with analytical proficiency about how it will affect me, but what is the right thing to do.
‘Which of the three was neighbor to the robber’s victim?’ Jesus asked the scholar of the law. ‘The one who treated him with mercy.’ He had learned the lesson Jesus taught. Our Lord then said to him and says us: ‘go and do likewise’. ‘Then you will inherit eternal life’. Whether we do is up to us.