"Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:37). This is how Jesus, of whom it can be said the Good Samaritan is an allegory, makes visible the invisible God. In turn, it is how Christians, by the Holy Spirit's power, make Jesus visible. A few verses beyond the end of our reading from the Letter to the Colossians, the inspired author makes it clear how God chooses "to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery... is Christ in you..." (Col 1:27). Lest you think my use of ellipses truncates what the verse says, after "is Christ in you" comes these words: "the hope for glory," which brings the verse and the sentence to a close.
What is "the hope for glory"? "Christ in you."
Too often the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are disconnected. To make any sense at all, they must always be kept together. Maintaining this tension is a task for Christian theology. As the "preeminent" one, Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, the "concrete universal." The very one for, through, and in whom all things exist is the same one who dialogues with the scholar of the Law.
Had he been content to let things be, this scholar would've passed at least the academic portion of the test with flying colors. But by needing "to justify himself," he posed another question. This other question is simply a different way of asking "Who can I exclude from my care?" Jesus, in his answer, made the scholar aware that it was not enough to give the correct answer.
Who is my neighbor? My neighbor is the person I encounter who needs my help. Pope Francis speaks often of a "culture of indifference." In Evangelii Gaudium, which is the charter of the Franciscan papacy, the Holy Father noted:
To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us (sec. 54)It's easy to love (or hate) humanity. Humanity, however, is an abstraction. In truth, while you might be more or less favorably disposed toward an abstraction, you can't love it.
You can only love a person, someone you meet, someone with whom you cross paths. Now, as in Jesus' day, you don't know from day to day or even from hour to hour whose life might intersect with yours at a specific time and in a given place. In our fast-paced society, we cross paths with so many people, way more than in ancient Galilee, even the "big city" of ancient Jerusalem. This is a challenge. We often operate on sensory overload.
So, the real and very troubling question becomes: When you see someone in need, do you pass by on the other side of the street or, worse yet, do you just indifferently step over them? Or, like the Samaritan, are you moved with compassion?
Being compassionately disposed toward another certainly requires discernment. It would be impossible for you to meet all the needs of even one person, let alone the needs of everyone you meet who moves you to compassion. What matters is that you don't avert your eyes, ignoring not what you see but who you see.
Our first reading from Deuteronomy insists that to truly observe the Law you must first have a change of heart, a conversion. External adherence to a set of rules has never been enough, even before Jesus came along. This reading urges us to look inside ourselves. At the end of the day, to know what the Law requires you don't need a spectacular revelation or disclosure. No, it is "already in your mouths and in your hearts." This is the point Jesus makes to the scholar after undoubtedly expanding his definition of neighbor. Hence, all that is left is "to carry it out."
C.S. Lewis starts Mere Christianity with a section entitled "The Law of Human Nature." In this section he writes about something that goes some distance toward explaining just how the command of God is already on our lips and in our hearts:
I am only trying to call attention to a fact... that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. There may be all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money— the one you have almost forgotten —came when you were very hard up. And what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done — well, you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be. And as for your behaviour to your wife (or husband) or sister (or brother) if I knew how irritating they could be, I would not wonder at it — and who the dickens am I, anyway? I am just the same.One point I am trying to make here, which, I am convinced is something Jesus saw quite clearly, is that, like the priest and Levite, who were perhaps going up to Jerusalem from Jericho when they passed the half-dead man, religious observance is often used as an excuse for not doing that which should be done. Another point, I suppose, is this truth is as evident in our failure as it is when we manage to do "like" the Good Samaritan.
That is to say, I do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so— that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility
To summarize, the essence of being a Christian is to make yourself a neighbor. Coming as it does from the same root as the English word for "vicinity," the Spanish word for neighbor, vecino, means someone in proximity to you. Hence, your neighbors are not just the people who live next door or across the street. Most of us don't stay home all day. Quite literally then, our vecinos change over the course of most days. Recognizing this, we should always move with compassion.
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