On this Monday of the twenty-seventh week in Ordinary Time, the Church reads the letter to the Galatians and the parable of the Samaritan, and remembers Saint Faustina Kowalska, a virgin of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. We are tempted to keep a safe distance from whatever costs us, a demanding truth or a wounded neighbour. The readings cross that distance in three steps: a gospel received, a psalm of redemption, and a road.
And behold, a certain expert in the law rose up, testing him and saying, "Teacher, what must I do to possess eternal life?" But he said to him: "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" In response, he said: "You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart, and from your whole soul, and from all your strength, and from all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him: "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live." But since he wanted to justify himself, he said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Then Jesus, taking this up, said: "A certain man descended from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he happened upon robbers, who now also plundered him. And inflicting him with wounds, they went away, leaving him behind, half-alive. And it happened that a certain priest was descending along the same way. And seeing him, he passed by. And similarly a Levite, when he was near the place, also saw him, and he passed by. But a certain Samaritan, being on a journey, came near him. And seeing him, he was moved by mercy. And approaching him, he bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. And setting him on his pack animal, he brought him to an inn, and he took care of him. And the next day, he took out two denarii, and he gave them to the proprietor, and he said: 'Take care of him. And whatever extra you will have spent, I will repay you on my return.' Which of these three, does it seem to you, was a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?" Then he said, "The one who acted with mercy toward him." And Jesus said to him, "Go, and act similarly." (Lk 10:25-37)
The first reading opens the letter to the Galatians, written by Paul, the apostle to the nations and a former Pharisee of Tarsus, to the churches he had founded in the highlands of central Asia Minor. He leaves out his usual thanksgiving and goes straight to the wound: "I wonder that you have been so quickly transferred, from him who called you into the grace of Christ, over to another gospel" (Gal 1:6). The speed alarms him more than the error.
Paul does not answer with a better argument. He answers by naming the origin of what he preaches: the gospel is "not according to man" (Gal 1:11), and he received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. That claim cuts in two directions. A message that no human being invented can never be trimmed to human taste, and no preacher can own it. Another gospel is therefore any version of the message that has been edited to cost us less.
The responsorial psalm answers from the other side of the same truth, since it sings of a God who acts before anyone has asked him. The psalmist counts the works of the Lord and arrives at the one that sums them all: "He has sent redemption upon his people" (Ps 110:9). Redemption is sent, as a gift is sent. Where the letter says that the gospel cannot be edited, the psalm says that its mercy cannot be earned.
The Gospel of Saint Luke, the physician and travelling companion of Paul, opens with a lawyer who stands up to test Jesus and asks what he must do to possess eternal life. Jesus sends the question back, and the man answers correctly with the Law: love God with the whole heart, and the neighbour as oneself. But he wants to justify himself, and so he asks, "And who is my neighbor?" The question sounds innocent, yet it asks for a boundary: tell us where the duty ends, and we will keep it faithfully.
Jesus does not give him a definition. He tells a story about a man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, was stripped and left half-alive by robbers, and was then seen by three travellers. The priest and the Levite, both servants of the Temple, see him and pass by, and contact with a dying man would have made them unfit for worship. The Samaritan, a foreigner despised by the listeners, is the only one of whom Luke says that "he was moved by mercy" (Lk 10:33).
Then Jesus reverses the lawyer's question. The lawyer asked who counts as a neighbour, and the parable asks who became one: the first question looks for a limit, the second discovers a movement. A neighbour is not found by sorting people into those whom we owe and those whom we do not. A neighbour is made by the one who halts on the road. The gospel that Paul received is exactly this kind of word, because it asks for the whole of us.
Bethlehem has always read this parable from the ditch rather than from the road. It is the town where a family found no room, and where the Child was laid among those whom the inn had turned away. In the tradition that takes its name from that town, the little and the unnoticed are not objects of pity but the ground that hardship has ploughed and that stays open to the seed. That is why the Samaritan kneels at the roadside instead of standing above it. He plants nothing, and yet he is the only traveller from whom fruit comes.
Today, the word of God invites us to hear the last words of the parable, "Go, and act similarly" (Lk 10:37), as addressed to the heart before they are addressed to the hands: a readiness to be interrupted. In our homes, in our workplaces and in our parishes, someone is always lying a little off the road that we had planned to take.
Saint Faustina Kowalska, the Polish religious of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy whom the Church remembers today, placed mercy at the centre of her prayer, and the Samaritan shows what such a prayer produces: a man who is moved first and acts at once. Let us ask for a heart that can be moved, so that we may be found among those who stop where others pass by.
Scripture text: Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV), public domain.
Prayer of the Day
Lord Jesus, you were laid in Bethlehem where there was no room, and you taught us that a neighbour is the one who stops. Keep your gospel unedited in our hearts, and move us with the compassion of the Samaritan, so that we may kneel beside the wounded instead of passing by. Give us a heart as simple as the Child of Bethlehem. Amen.
For Meditation
- Which parts of the gospel have we quietly edited so that it would cost us less?
- Where do we still ask who our neighbour is, when we should be asking whom we have become a neighbour to?
- Who lies a little off the road we had planned to take, and what would it mean to be moved before we begin to calculate?
