The motivation of the Good Samaritan was that he lived with the mercy of God he didn't deserve and was the recipient of the generosity of others he didn't merit.

 

Fifteenth Sunday in OT  C  2022

Today’s gospel is the very familiar and much loved parable  of the good Samaritan.  The gospel clearly calls  us to be missionaries of mercy in the lives of people in need.  We are to be witnesses to the mercy of God to each other.  The mercy of God means sharing with one another acts of undeserved kindness.

 

As you pray over this gospel parable, I have two questions for you:

 

n  What is your view from the ditch.

n  Secondly, the scholar of the law asked Jesus:  Who is my neighbor?  My question for you is:  Who is not your neighbor?

Going back  to the first question, what is your view from the ditch?  In the parable, the view from the ditch for the man who fell among the robbers, he was beaten and left for being half dead.  His view from the ditch was one of desperation and in need of help?

I invite you to recall a life situation when you were in need of help and suggest that that is your view from the ditch.

For the people in Ukraine, their view from the ditch is overwhelming in their war devastated country?

For the family members of far too many grieving families as a result of gun violence on our streets, their view from the ditch is one of outrage and questions what can be done to stop this gun violence.

For me a view from the ditch is reflecting on the leadership  of our church with the extreme shortage of priests,  where are we headed?

 

Your view from the ditch is the place of the cross, the place of struggle in your life?

Be assured that God is present to you in the place of darkness in your life, be assured this place in the ditch can be part of God’s plan for your life.  o time of darkness can be motivation for  you to share your love and the mercy with someone whom you encounter in the ditch.

I suggest to you that what motivated the Samaritan traveler to help the person who fell among the robbers was that he too had previously been in his own ditch and this experience moved him to be the Good Samaritan to the person in need.

The Good Samaritan lived with the mercy of God that he didn’t deserve and was the recipient of the generosity of people that he didn’t merit.  This was his motivation to share his love with the person in the ditch.

 

What of the priest and the levite who simply by on the other side of the road?  They may have been on  the journey to pray in the synagogue and to lift themselves up to God in prayer.

 

Perhaps what was missing in the spirituality of the priest and the levite was Pope Francis’ profound insight that the church is to be a field hospital.  The mission of the church is to reach out and support and love all those who are in the ditches of their lives.

Perhaps the motivation we need to see the Church as a field hospital is to be very touch with our own experiences of the struggles and the crosses of our lives and when we have the recipients of the undeserved kindness of another.

 

Even in the joy of the Easter Vigil liturgy, we sign in the beautiful Easter hymn of the exulted, O Beata Culpa – o blessed fault.  Our sins, our shortcomings, our struggles, our places in the ditch lead us to experience the unending love of God in our lives and motivates us to share this love and mercy with one another.

 

To the second question, which is introduced in the parable, when the scholar of the law asked Jesus:   Who is my neighbor?  My question for you is:  Who is not your neighbor.

 

The theme of our most recent Adult formation sessions was:  Love your neighbor, no exception.

 

Love your neigbor, who doesn’t look like you.

                                    Who doesn’t think like  you.

                                    Who doesn’t love like you.

                                    Who doesn’t speak like you.

                                    Who doesn’t pray like you.

                                    Who doesn’t vote like you.

Love your neighbor, no  exceptions.

Yes, we live in a divided, polarized world.  Yes, in some ways, we live in a divided, polarized Church.

But I always go back to the last words that Jesus spoke to his disciples at the Last Supper on the night before he died:  By this all shall know you are my disciples, by your love for one another.

 

In the message that Jesus lived and in the message he taught in his parables:  the prodigal son and in this parable of the Good Samaritan.  The first priority  of the disciple of Jesus is to love.

Today we kick off in our parish life a two week summer intensive for our younger parishioners as we seek to form and fashion after the mind and heart of Jesus.

It is our goal that our parishioners come to know Jesus more deeply in their life.  We wish for them to experience God’s unending love for them, and they are God’s beloved sons and daughters.

 

It is our strong conviction that in experiencing God’s love for them, they in turn will be motivated to be Good Samaritans in their family and in their neighborhood.