Compassion and love

This Sunday the readings focus on the themes of love, neighbor, and following God’s commandments, exploring the lawyer’s question about inheriting eternal life, and the parable of the Good Samaritan. Having emphasized the importance of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, it also highlights the idea that God’s commandments are a privilege, not a burden, and are meant to guide us toward a fulfilling life.

The readings from Deuteronomy and Colossians highlight God’s commandments as being meant to guide us toward a life of freedom and fulfillment; teaching us how to embrace these commandments as a privilege rather than as a burden.

The Second Reading focuses on the supremacy of Christ and His role as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

The Good Samaritan shows that love extends to all, even those who are different or considered enemies. The homily could explore how we can extend that love in our own lives and communities.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan, a familiar story to many of us, speaks of an unidentified man, robbed and beaten, and left to die by the roadside. He had been travelling on the steep and dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho — a notorious road for travelers called the Road of Blood. He was in trouble and he needed help. As we know, a priest and a Levite, both Jews, passed by and ignored him, but a Samaritan, seen as an outsider by Jewish society, had pity on him. He was the one who cared for him, bound his wounds and looked after him, at a financial cost to himself, until the traveler had recovered at the inn.

Today, this story requires us to act compassionately, as the Samaritan did, and to exhibit good moral behavior in all situations as a good example to others. Remember that to love our neighbor is to love God. However, if we just view it this way, we’ll miss the rest of what Jesus was trying to teach us here. Like many passages in Luke’s Gospel, it shares a central message of God’s salvation for all his people, whether Jew or Gentile. It is about God’s clear and unambiguous message of welcome, compassion and love for others.

The Samaritan displayed a compassion for the injured man, who was most likely a Jew, that was not restrained by national, racial, or religious boundaries. This was, as Jesus intended, in direct contrast to the priest and the Levite, whose narrow definition of neighbor as only a fellow Jew and their strict observation of the purity laws made them shamefully ignore the injured man.

For Jesus, the Law of Moses, so rigidly adhered to by the Jews, was out of step with what God now wanted from his people. It was no longer aligned with God’s universal message of hope and salvation for all. Jesus was telling the Jews, and us, that God’s salvation has been extended beyond the boundaries of his Chosen People, Israel, and that all are welcome in God’s Kingdom.