The Good Samaritan
The Mystery of the Good Samaritan
Today’s Gospel, the parable of the Good Samaritan, is familiar to us. It is, perhaps, too familiar. We assume that we have grasped its message when, in fact, its message may not yet have taken hold of our hearts. The Fathers of the Church discerned a mystery — that is to say, something hidden — in the story of the Good Samaritan: the mystery of the healing mercy of God revealed in Christ Jesus. We are all of us, perhaps, touched by a certain world view that conditions us to open the Gospel in search of a plan of action. What needs to be done? What is the most efficient way to do it? The priest in the Gospel was, it would seem, going about his affairs: a man with important things to do. There were prayers to be said, sacrifices to be offered, accounts to be kept. So too was the Levite: he had people to see, appointments to keep, tasks to complete before the end of the day. Religious busyness is a terrible thing.
The Church opens the book of the Gospels not as one opens a how–to–do–it manual but, rather, as the priest opens the door of the tabernacle: to encounter the living Christ, to behold His Face, to hear His voice, to discover the thoughts of His Heart. What changes lives is not the decision to undertake a program of good works but the astonishment of coming face–to–face in “a dazzling brightness” (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:7) with One who bends low to meet us in the very depths of our misery.
God Suffers at the Sight of Our Suffering
The Good Samaritan is none other than Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. In the days of His flesh, as He journeyed in this world, praying to His Father “with a strong cry and tears” (Hebrews 5:7), Christ came to where we were (cf. Luke 10:33). And when He saw all of us, sinners, stripped, and beaten, and left for dead in a ditch, He had compassion (cf. Luke 10:33). The human Heart of God was moved. God, looking upon us through the eyes of His Christ, suffered at the sight of our suffering. One cannot but recall the words of God to Moses in the book of Exodus: “I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt . . . And knowing their sorrow, I am come down to deliver them” (Exodus 3:7–8). In the Offertory Antiphon, Christ, the true Moses, will lift the voice of His priestly pleading to the Father, and the Epistle to the Hebrews tell us that He “was heard for His reverence” (Hebrews 5:7).
What was the great cry of the Introit, if not the prayer of the poor man, lying stripped, wounded, and helpless by the side of the road?
O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me; let my enemies be confounded and ashamed, that seek my soul. (Psalm 69:2–3)
And what was the heart–rending wail of the Alleluia verse, if not the same poor man using all his remaining strength to cry out to God?
O Lord, the God of my salvation, I have cried in the day and in the night before Thee. (Psalm 87:2)
How does God respond to such prayers? “I am your God”, He says, “I come low to assist you. I hasten to help you. As for your enemies, they shall be confounded and ashamed for having sought your soul. I am the God who saves; I come to lift you out of the ditch, to bind up your wounds, to restore you to wholeness. I hear you when you cry out to Me by day, and all the night I listen for the sound of your weeping”.
Ethical Religion Alone Is Not Enough
It would be altogether too facile to reduce the message of today’s gospel to its ethical demands alone, to hear it exclusively in terms of a social imperative. Be good. Be sensitive. Be caring. Show mercy. It is, of course, all of that. In Chapter IV of the Holy Rule Saint Benedict counts the corporal and spiritual works of mercy among the Instruments of Good Works. The life of the great Benedictine archbishop of Catania, Blessed Joseph Benedict Dusmet, for example, was a tale of mercy upon mercy in favour of the poor, the sick, the sorrowing, and those brought low by sin.
Wanting to Be Splendid
All of that being said, there is more to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Most of us prefer to cast ourselves in the role of the Samaritan rather than to see ourselves in the one robbed, stripped, forsaken, and half-dead. Most of us, I think, prefer to see ourselves on the road rather than in the ditch. The Samaritan is the hero. The Samaritan keeps the upper hand in the story. The Samaritan is splendid. Who among us does not, at least sometimes, want to be splendid?
Salvation in the Gutter
Churches are full of splendid people and of people who want to be splendid. Who does not want to be perceived as healthy, wholesome, handsome, strong, virtuous, bright, winning, accomplished, and successful? Splendid. We needed the teaching of a twenty-four year old Doctor of the Church ravaged by tuberculosis to see that holiness is not about being splendid at all. Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face tells that it is, rather, about accepting that we have landed in the gutter, that we are, in fact, without resources, stripped, wounded, half-dead, and utterly incapable of changing any of that by ourselves. The God who bends over our souls with a face of indescribable tenderness, the God who touches our wounds with the strong and gentle hands of mercy, meets us not in the high places, not in Jerusalem, nor in Jericho, nor on the road of a splendid progress, but in the gutter of our absolute need of Him.
Discerning the Face, the Heart, the Hands of Christ
In the Samaritan of today’s gospel, the Fathers of the Church discern the Face, the Heart, the Hands of Christ. Christ Jesus is near us in our poverty, near us in our nakedness. He is nearer to us when we are broken and brought very low than we when we are splendid and marching on. “A Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion” (Luke 10:33).
Christ Stops for Each of Us
Our Lord comes to where we are and, seeing us, has compassion. He stops for each of us; He binds up our wounds, pouring oil and wine upon them, cleansing and disinfecting them, healing them with the medicine of the Holy Ghost and of His Blood. This where today’s Communion Antiphon relates to the Gospel, for in the Communion Antiphon we shall sing of the “wine that may cheer the heart of man, and oil to make his face shine” (Psalm 103:15). Christ lifts us from where He finds us. He brings us to the inn of His Father’s healing hospitality; there He cares for us, and pays all our expenses.
The Human Face of God
When the poor man opened his eyes to see who it was who was caring for him with such tenderness he beheld a human face. Christ Jesus is the human Face of God, the Face we behold when we open our eyes to see who it is who is caring for us. In the end, it is the experience of this Face that changes us. It is in the closeness of this Face to ours, with, as Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity said, “His eyes in our eyes,” and with the warmth of His breath upon us, that we are resurrected to newness of life and sent back to the road whence we came to “go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).
We are to hasten along this road with Benedictine alacrity, confident that the petition of today’s Collect has already been heard and granted: “grant, we pray Thee, that we may not stumble as we speed towards the good things Thou hast promised”. So long as we hasten in the way that is Christ — “I am the Way” (John 14:6) — we are in no danger of stumbling and, even if we should, out of human weakness wander along other paths, lose our way, and suffer the violence of ambush and assault, we have only to lift our voice in supplication. “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall speedily arise, and thy justice shall go before thy face, and the glory of the Lord shall gather thee up. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall hear: thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am”. (Isaias 58:8–9).
