A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.
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Today’s gospel (Luke 10: 25-37) relates the
famous parable of the Good Samaritan. A lawyer questions Jesus, wanting to
wrongfoot him, and Jesus, as always, side steps the trap, this time by shining
the light of divine truth right into this lawyer’s eyes. And then comes the
question: who is my neighbour? The fulfilment of the law that dictates that one
must love one’s neighbour as oneself, depends entirely on a proper
understanding of who one’s neighbour is. And so, the lawyer is anxious. He does
not seek union with God but perfection. And in this way, his actions and
attitudes already anticipate part of the parable to come.
The outline of the parable is, of course,
well known. A man is waylaid by brigands on his way to Jericho, a priest and a
levite pass him by and do not help him, and it is only because of the actions
of a Samaritan - a member of a sect in schism from the main body of Judaism - that
this poor man is helped. So many Saints and Doctors of the Church have
commented on this passage. The man travelling to Jericho is often seen as a
symbol of fallen humanity, attacked by the violence of the devil and left for
dead. The priest and the levite symbolise the Law and the Prophets that cannot
deliver the man from his misfortune. And the Samaritan is none other than Jesus,
the one who was rejected, who becomes the source of the man's salvation, and
pays the price of his care and rehabilitation.
There are always spiritual lights to be found
in these parables, however. Can we imagine, for example, that the priest and
the levite are so entirely indifferent to the fate of the man who has been
attacked? Personally, I doubt it. So then, the question arises as to why they
took no action to look after him? What afflicts them to prevent then caring for
him in his grievous need? And what has this to do with us who have probably
never crossed the path of a Jewish priest or levite?
We might see in these two figures two
different kinds of spiritual disease that corrupt the exercise of love of
neighbour. In the case of the priest, for example, we might see the kind of
service or ministry which has become so official that all fervour has drained
out of it. The priest is busy about his business. He has places to go and
people to see. He has meetings to attend, forms to fill in, reports to write, and
appointments that cannot be missed. And this is how ministry of any kind, not
just the ministry of a priest, can turn from an exercise in the unction of the
Holy Spirit into a fossilised object that serves nobody's benefit but its own. This
is the kind of ministry which sees people as clients, rather then as suppliants
whose chief need is mercy. It no longer seeks to battle with sin but only with
disorganisation. It wishes to deal with symptoms and not with causes. It
prefers to place cushions beneath the elbows of sinners, rather than perform
the uncomfortable service of challenging their complacency. This is a ministry
that seeks control of its beneficiaries, rather than looking for Christ in
their eyes. It is a ministry of jargon, propped up by cliché, that probably
feels like a burden but a burden that cannot be put down. What is missing in
all this is the inner dynamic, the life at the roots, the energy that makes the
Samaritan stop in his tracks and adjust himself to the needs of the person who
lies by the side of the road, abandoning the schedules and appointments he has
fixed in his diary, to tend the man’s wounds that suppurate with the poison of
sin. When officiousness has replaced care, charity has already fled.
Those of us who have no particular ministry
may feel such lessons do not apply to us. But not so fast: for here comes the
levite. The priest suffered from one kind of disease, but at least his focus
was still on things around him, even if his ministry was supposed to make him
care for people rather than things. The levite, on the other hand, is another
kettle of fish. The levite does not want to touch the man, not because he has
other things to do, but probably because he perceives that in touching the man,
he may become ritually unclean. His focus is not on organisation, planning,
appointments, official meetings and all the paraphernalia of a busy priestly
ministry. Rather, it is fixed on just how well he is doing himself. After all,
he is trying to be as perfect as his Heavenly Father. He has fallen in love,
not with God Himself but with the idea of loving God, or perhaps with the idea
that proof of his loving God might be found in the approval that other people
show for his patent devotion, his exactitude in the performance of his
religious duties, for by their fruits you will know them. It is not so much
that he does not love his neighbour; he will know he loves his neighbour when
others observe him loving his neighbour, just not here on this lonely road
where his neighbour appears so frightening and hideous. He remembers ultimately
that the law commands him to love his neighbour as himself, and he loves
himself so very much…
Between the minister who is lost in
officialdom and the devotee who is lost to a project of self perfection, it is
little surprise if wounds go unhealed, sins go unforgiven, broken hearts lie unmended,
and wandering sheep remain lost. It is little wonder that the priest and levite
both are dying from a poison they have little hope of understanding or seeking
the remedy to.
And yet in the midst of it all, the answer to the riddle of the love of neighbour is lived out in the actions of a Samaritan who attends wholly to the victim in front of him, without ever shifting his attention away from the source of all love. The secret is compassion the origin of which word is to suffer with. We must bear each other's burdens; for that is how we fulfil this law of love.
Away, then, with officialdom and away
with cold perfection. Let us allow the love of God to make us docile tools in
the hands of the Potter himself.
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