Fifteenth Sunday of the year

Reading today's Gospel, one thing is certain: the parable of the good Samaritan is not to be read as a simple daylight robbery story or merely as teaching the need to be compassionate. It is actually one of three major parable narratives in Luke's Gospel and its depth, touching believer and non-believer alike, speaks to the world about its wounds and the much needed healing.

There are many who consider themselves as outsiders to our discourse of faith, just as the Samaritan in the parable was to the people of Israel, and yet are committed to brotherly love, social justice, and solidarity in admirable ways. This demands of us Christians to define more in depth what being Christian is specifically about.

There are different ways to read today's parable. We can simply and moralistically read it as a story to teach us who our neighbours really are and the extent of our love. But this same parable can also serve as a powerful metaphor of what our world is going through today.

The question 'Who is my neighbour?' remains significant. But there is another, perhaps much deeper question, that concerns the status of wounded humanity today and the possibility of healing.

Two thousand years have elapsed since this parable was written. And, since then, humanity has practically always been on its road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho, writes the Pope in his latest book Jesus of Nazareth, is an image of human history; the half-dead man lying by the side of it is an image of humanity.

On our roads we still have people wandering in the deserts of everyday life, children robbed of their present and future and left lying half-dead by the way-side, entire families robbed of every dignity and left half-dead coming to our shores in search of a better future, victims of war and terrorism, of drugs and all sorts of abuse, not to mention the destruction of moral standards.

Jerusalem in the Gospels stands for the place and time where the greatest love was consumed. The closer we come to Jerusalem, the closer we are to being healed. The further we move from Jerusalem, the more probable it becomes for us to fall prey to alienation.

According to ancient interpretations of today's Scripture, where we read that the Samaritan "bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them", the wine signifies the blood of Christ shed for all so that sins may be forgiven, whereas the oil stands for the anointing of the Spirit that opens our hearts to experience concretely in our daily life God's loving and merciful presence.

The parable in today's Gospel concerns not so much the question 'Who is my neighbour?', as the more fundamental question posed to Jesus in the first place: "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

We can continue to ask ourselves how far our obligations of solidarity extend. But, as in the parable, the burden of the question shifts and the issue is no longer who is a 'neighbour' to us. The question is rather about us.

I have to become a neighbour, and when I do, the other person counts for me as myself. We have to learn to be a neighbour deep within. The risk of goodness is something we must relearn from within. We realise that we always need God, who makes Himself our neighbour so that we can become neighbours.