In our reading from Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people that God’s commandments are not too complex to understand and carry out. Our reading from Colossians reminds us that God has not given us the Law but His Son through whom and for whom everything that exists was made. It is through the blood of Christ, shed on the cross, that God reconciles all things to Himself, making peace- restoring shalom, bringing about communion. As the Church, this constitutes our mission.
Like God’s commandments, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan is not difficult to grasp. The Lord tells this parable, which is unique to Luke, in response to the question, “And who is my neighbor.”1 There was no dispute about the requirement to love one’s neighbor. This is made explicit in the Law about which Moses was speaking. See Leviticus 19:18 for proof.
It seems that the scholar with whom Jesus was engaging understood the imperative to love his neighbor even as he loved himself. What he seems unclear about is just who his neighbor is. Who is it that I am commanded to love as I love myself. I don’t know about you but when it comes to myself, I got a whole lotta love.
In Spanish the word for neighbor is vecino. This is closely related to the English word “vicinity.” This points to the reality that far from being an abstract concept, your neighbor is someone in proximity to you, someone in your vicinity. Just as it is easy to love humanity because “humanity” is an abstraction but difficult to love that jackass over there, it is easy have neighborly feelings toward people far away for whom I can do little or nothing but hard to help the person who crosses my path who may need some assistance.
A statement like that inevitably elicits responses that start with “But…” An illustration may help. Once C.S. Lewis was walking along with a friend. As they walked, a street person approached and asked them for help. While Lewis’ friend continued walking, ignoring this plea for help, Lewis stopped and gave the man all the money in his wallet. When he caught up with him, this friend asked Lewis, “What are you doing giving him your money like that? Don't you know he's just going to go squander all that on ale?” After a moment’s pause, Lewis responded with “That's all I was going to do with it.”2
Now, is it good to be discerning in such situations? Absolutely. But we can find ways to assist those in need, whether it is giving them a bit of money or, if in the vicinity, offering to buy them food or providing them with something to drink.
It is also good to support organizations in our local community that assist our literal neighbors who are in need. The Bountiful Food Pantry is a great example of just such an organization. Of course, there are others. You don’t need to fly half-way around the world to spend a little time with the Missionaries of Charity, when the Daughters of Charity and others are helping those in need right here and who can always use assistance in their activities.
The Arrival of the Good Samaritan at the Inn, by Gustave Doré
In considering the Parable of the Good Samaritan, it might be useful to translate it to our milieu as Catholics in Utah. And so, we might rework it as something like the Parable of the Good Mormon, or to be more neighborly, the Parable of the Good Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; a mouthful, I know. Repurposed, it might go something like this:
A Catholic was headed to the Cathedral of the Madeleine to participate in the annual Chrism Mass. As she made her way from the Trax Station up South Temple to the Cathedral, she was assaulted, beaten, robbed, and left on the sidewalk unconscious. A Catholic priest came along and, seeing her on the sidewalk, crossed to the other side or the street to avoid her, maybe thinking something like, “Another drunk or junkie. This city is going downhill.” Besides, as a diocesan Consultor, he couldn’t be late for the Chrism Mass. Then along came a Catholic deacon (Levites are often associated with deacons) who, like the priest, crossed the street to avoid her. He had to make the Chrism Mass because he was presenting the oil to be consecrated for use in the sacrament of the anointing of the sick to the bishop.Retelling the parable in this way, I think, gives us a better idea of how it probably would’ve struck this scholar of the law and Jesus’ other Jewish hearers. In a letter written to the bishops of the United States back in February, Pope Francis, seeking to correct a defective understanding about who my neighbor is wrote:
Finally, along came a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was headed to Temple Square for a concert. Seeing the beaten and unconscious woman, she stopped, knelt, sought to revive her and, succeeding, gave her some water, rendered preliminary first aid, called emergency services, and stayed with her until the paramedics and police arrived on the scene, ensuring she was in good hands and the on way to the hospital. All of this made her miss the concert and she was to be a soloist.
The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan"3Indeed, this parable is a provocation. It’s meant to provoke us for (pro) your vocation or calling, received in baptism, strengthened by confirmation, reaffirmed in penance, and nurtured by the Eucharist.
And so, as regards our repurposed version of the Lord’s parable, which of those three (i.e., the priest, the deacon, the Latter-day Saint) was a neighbor to the one beaten and left for dead? That this is a rhetorical question only shows that Moses was right: it isn’t rocket science! Let’s go, then, and do likewise.
1 Luke 10:29.↩
2 Gary Hoag, “Give to Street People?,” in Christianity Today, January 2011, Vol. 55, No. 1, pg 60. ↩
3 Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the United States of America, sec. 6. 10 February 2025.↩
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