The relationships we find ourselves thrust into (Dr. Tom Neal)

    For Catholics, according to the late Francis Cardinal George, it is above all in those relationships we find ourselves thrust into—relationships that resist the shifting sands of whim or preference—that we learn what it means to be truly human. 

   Jesus’ Good Samaritan parable is about a man who finds himself confronted by a victim of violence who, simply by virtue of his proximity, imposes the severe demands of mercy on the Samaritan passerby. Unlike the priest and Levite, the Samaritan traveler refuses to unchoose this victim by passing on the other side of the road. Rather, he draws nigh, stooping low and pouring out compassion on a stranger’s wounds he claimed as his own. 

   The moral of the story is made even more stark by Jesus’ insertion of the dark Jewish-Samaritan history of ethnic, cultural, and religious hatred. Such ancient and powerful rationales for unchoosing others simply dissolve under the force of this parable’s inexorable logic, making clear to all hearers there is no room in the kingdom of God for those who choose to exclude anyone from laying claim on their own freely offered love. 

--Dr. Tom Neal       

Image source: William Henry Margetson, The Good Samaritan (1890), 
https://gallerix.org/storeroom/1252460235/N/1621882042/

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