To love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart, with all your being,
with all your strength, and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself.
The redemption of Creation lies in
our capacity to take today's readings seriously.
--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Scripture Class, July 10, 2025,
on the readings for the Fifteenth Sunday
in Ordinary Time, Year C
For Catholics 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. [Francis Cardinal George] argued it is among the people we are “stuck to” that we become capable of grasping the deep meaning hidden in the divine command, “You shall love your neighbor as your self.” For when we are confronted by the unsought face of a neah bur—one “near by”—love encounters its highest calling.
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: François Ribas, The Good Samaritan, Temple de Bière, Switzerland, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1785622648381496
Quotation source
No comments:
Post a Comment