Cycle C - Year II:  

10 July 2022: 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 hit two birds with one stone!"

Our caption is a well-known idiom, which means to complete, achieve, or take care of two tasks at the same time or with a singular series of actions.  Let us use this approach to reflect on the Gospel proclamation this Sunday.  

St. Luke writes: A scholar of the law stood up to test Jesus and asked: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? (Lk 10:25)  It's an interesting and smart question.  For the lawyer wanted to gain, not worldly inheritance that disappears, but an everlasting one in the next life.  But he asks not out of genuine, unfeigned desire to live rightly and attain eternal life, but simply "to test Jesus", as St. Luke tells us. In other words, his is a great question but poorly asked or for the wrong reason.

Let us reflect on the importance of the question itself: What must I do to inherit eternal life? The question is a matter of final causality. The lawyer sets eternal life as the ultimate goal, and wants to know how to get there. For indeed if we know not where we are going, neither we will know how to live. The reality is that we should also be interested in our final end while in this world.

But the tragedy of the scene in the Gospel story lies in the lawyer's motive.  And this is what we ought not imitate.  He desires to test (literally "to tempt") our Lord.  He asks not to gain answers but to put Jesus on the spot.

Nonetheless, despite himself, the lawyer teaches us two essentials: to ask the right questions and to ask them in the right way or for the right reason.  The right questions must be asked with a sincere desire to know what is true and conform our lives to it.    

The second "bird" in our hit is how our Lord handles the situation.  Jesus was smarter and did not give the lawyer a direct answer to his question. And further exchanges between our Lord and the law scholar on how to inherit everlasting life touches on two great commandments: 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.  In the social context of that time, Jesus tells this parable to shock and challenge His listeners.  Because Jews were hostile to 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.  Therefore, we can learn important lessons from this particular parable on who our real neighbors are.

The 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.

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.  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 act 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!