Cycle C - Year I:  

14 July 2019: Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 

(Liturgical Color: Green)

Readings:

First Reading:        Deuteronomy 30:10-14

Second Reading:   Colossians 1:15-20

Gospel:  Please Read  Luke 10:25-37

To gain our heavenly inheritance!

How does one attain a comfortable life?  There are many ways.  Foremost perhaps it to get adequate education to have a good-paying job later on.  Or try a "short-cut", by winning a lottery perhaps. And luckier still if you unexpectedly receive an inheritance.

The last possible option connects us to the Gospel narrative this Sunday.

A scholar of the law stood up to test Jesus and asked:  "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Lk 10:25)

Let us say the guy was quite smart. For he wanted to gain, not worldly inheritance that disappears, but an everlasting one in the next life. But the Gospel said he just wanted to test or trick our Lord.

Now, Jesus was smarter and did not give him a direct answer to his question. And further exchanges between our Lord and the law scholar on how to inherit everlasting life touched on two great commandments, which is love for God and love for neighbor.  Like any other legal experts, even in our time, the lawyer wanted to spar with Jesus over  the legal text of the Jewish law, and so he asked our Lord the clenching question, "And who is my neighbor?" 

Jesus responded by narrating the well-known Parable of the Good Samaritan.  Let us examine briefly the implication of this parable at that time.  In the social context of that time, Jesus tells this parable to shock and challenge His listeners.  Because recall that Jews were hostile to the Samaritans, who were considered social outcasts.  Thus, by the choice of such protagonists, Jesus intentionally scandalizes the lawyer to shock this complacent and self-serving man into genuine understanding of love for one's neighbor.

Ultimately, our Lord also addresses this Parable of the Good Samaritan to everyone in our own time, especially those who want to test God and justify themselves.  We can, therefore, learn important lessons from this particular parable.

First, the use of Samaritan (whom we said earlier was considered the outcast of society in Jesus' time) as depicting him as a good neighbor is to show that we ought not to set limits to our charity.  It must extend even to our "enemies" who need our help.  Because Christian charity knows no bounds.

Second, the Parable presents the Samaritan as the exemplar of love for neighbor to show that God's grace also extends to all, that is to say, beyond the "saintly and the holy", enabling even Samaritans (or the "less-Godly") to love others as God commands.

Finally, but not last, Parable teaches us that to be a neighbor is to be more sensitive to human life, both the joy and the pain of people.  Because being a neighbor is not based on personal relationship, race or religion.  We should worry less about our own perception, or definition, of who is a neighbor, but more about being a neighbor to all, especially those who desperately need our help and mercy.

Thus, the Parable of the Good Samaritan provides an inspiring standard of love for neighbor.  And Jesus told this Parable to show how wide God's love and mercy towards all.  In recent time, Saint Mother Theresa is our role model of a good neighbor as she cared for the abandoned and the dying in the streets of India.

And so the search for eternal life is a quest that we ourselves seek out today in our generation.  What must we do in order to be saved?  The Good Samaritan story teaches us to go out of our way to help someone in need.  Because to be a real neighbor is to be more human by practicing love that is generous, sacrificial, extending even to our "enemies".  For it is in being a neighbor that we are also able to be living witnesses of our faith through concrete action of charity and mercy, and not just through self-serving devotion.

A blessed Sunday to us all. And thank you for a moment with God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!