The Good Samaritan

The Good Samaritan
By Adam Elsheimer

“‘Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’”
Luke 10:36-37

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The Parable of the Good Samaritan challenges us to reconsider our understanding of what it means to be a neighbor. A man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho is brutally attacked, left half-dead by the side of the road. A priest and a temple worker, each expected to show mercy, pass him by. Instead, a Samaritan stops to aid the suffering man. Jews and Samaritans shared a deep-seated animosity that traced back centuries, steeped in religious and cultural differences, so a Samaritan being the hero of the story would have been shocking to Jesus's original audience. But, as G.K. Chesterton has written, unlike friends and enemies, we do not choose the neighbors we are called to love; God chooses them for us.

The Samaritan does not simply offer token sympathy or concern, but instead involves himself entirely in the injured man’s welfare – providing immediate first aid, arranging ongoing care, and promising to return and settle any outstanding costs. Like the priest and Levite, the Samaritan had ready excuses for leaving the man unaided. The road was very dangerous, and the attackers might return. He may have felt unskilled in first aid—and perhaps the man was already a hopeless case. No doubt, he had his own errands to run and places to go. But instead of “passing by,” the Samaritan “came to where the man was.” The precariousness of the place and the lateness of the hour didn’t matter in the face of the unmet need of a stranger, for, as Thomas Merton taught, “compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.”

The Samaritan’s motives seem to mirror those of the saintly Beatrice in Dante’s Inferno, who, when asked why she helped the ailing poet, replied “Amor mi mosse” – Love has moved me. Philosopher Adam Miller reminds that “God constantly gives himself in the inconvenient…in what we would like to ignore.” We emulate God’s divine love as we care for the “least of these” where they are (Matt. 25:40). We might ask ourselves: Who are the wounded ones in my path? Am I willing to disrupt my life to be with them in their suffering? Do I recognize the divine call to love my neighbors, not abstractly or theoretically, but through tangible, sacrificial and meaningful acts? As we seek out the wounded among us, let us remember the words of 14th century English mystic Julian of Norwich: “Lord, let not our souls be busy inns that have no room for thee or thine, But quiet homes of prayer and praise, where thou mayest find fit company, Where the needful cares of life are wisely ordered and put away, And wide, sweet spaces kept for thee.”

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