July 14th

Post date: Jul 15, 2019 12:30:17 AM

July 14, 2019 Homily by Fr. Karl Schray

Today’s Gospel is one of the most famous of all parables in the New

Testament. Often Jews and Samaritans of Jesus’ time hated one another.

The term ‘good samaritan’ would have been considered ridiculous.

The Jews considered them sub-human. Sound familiar—remind you of any

recent prejudices in human history, e.g. Native Americans, African slaves?

The lawyer’s question—who is my neighbor?

We often say it is whomever I choose to be a neighbor to.

Jesus’ answer is- by way of the parable- anyone regardless of class,

color, race or creed, who needs our help.

The real question is not who I consider to be my neighbor but

who am I willing to treat as a neighbor? What kind of neighbor am I?

Jesus answers with a story. A man lies on the side of the road,

badly injured, possibly dead. Were a priest to touch the corpse of the

Jewish traveler, he would become ritually unclean for seven days. No sense risking that for a stranger.

Were a Levite (a person who worked at the Temple) to touch the corpse, he would be liable for burial costs. What was this stranger to him?

Now along comes a Samaritan businessman, a non-Jew, and hence

a non-neighbor. He chooses to follow the higher law of compassion and

became the unlikely hero of the parable. By his action he shows himself a

real neighbor worthy of being a member of the God’s covenant community, because of his compassion.

The priest and the Levite were religious people. Yet they didn’t feel compassion for the wounded man. Religion without compassion is a contradiction. Without compassion one cannot call oneself a true human being—let alone a spiritual person.

The Samaritan came along and went to the man’s aid because he was

filled with compassion—he was not concerned that the man was a Jew.

The priest and the Levite were guilty of the sin of omission because they

only considered fellow Jews to be their neighbor. Don’t we Christians

often do the same thing? We sometimes believe that if we do no harm,

we are living rightly. But God demands more from us.

Has there ever been someone we could have helped but stood by without intervening?

The 27 mile still desolate road from Jerusalem to Jericho passes right

through our home, parish and workplace—it represents the road of life.

At the end of the parable,

Jesus’ response is for us to “go and act like the Samaritan.”

While we are still on the road, we can still carry out Jesus’ words.

It’s the same as God’s command in the first reading—

“You have only to carry it out.” Will we?

A story:

Bob Butler lost his legs in a landmine explosion in Vietnam and returned

home a hero. Twenty years later he proved that heroism comes from the

heart. He was working in his garage in a little town in Arizona

when he heard a woman’s scream coming from a nearby house.

He began rolling his wheelchair toward the house, but the dense shrubbery

would not allow him to enter the backyard. So, he got out of the chair and

started crawling through the bushes.

When he crawled into the backyard

there was a 3-year-old named Stephanie lying at the bottom of the swimming pool.

She had been born without arms and had fallen into the water and couldn’t

swim. Her mother was hysterical. Butler dove to the bottom of the pool and

brought the little girl up to the deck. Her face was blue, she had no pulse

and was not breathing.

Butler immediately started CPR while Stephanie’s mom called 911.

As Butler continued with CPR, he calmly reassured her. “Don’t worry, I was

her arms to get her out of the pool, I am now her lungs. It will be okay.”

Seconds later, the little girl coughed and regained consciousness.

As they rejoiced together, the mother asked him how he knew it would be

okay. He answered- “The truth is, I didn’t know. But when my legs

were blown off in the war, I was all alone in a field. No one was there

to help except a little Vietnamese girl. As she struggled to drag me into her

village, she whispered in broken English, ‘it okay, you can live. I will be

your legs.’ Her kind words brought hope to my soul and

I wanted to do the same for you and Stephanie.”

There are times we cannot stand alone.

There are times when we need a Good Samaritan,

someone to be our legs, our arms, our friend.

Again, Jesus teaches us. “Go and do likewise”.