A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor through the window hanging the washing outside. “That laundry is not clean,” she said. “She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap”. Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time the neighbour would hang laundry to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About one month later, the woman was surprised to see nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: “Look, she has learnt how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this!” The husband replied: “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”
This story might help us to understand what is going on in the parable we hear in our gospel today. In the parable we hear how both the priest and the levite pass by on the other side and do not come to the aid of this poor man who has been assailed by robbers. The Samaritan does. Why? Because he is a more loving person, more compassionate, more holy? I don’t think it is any of the above. The main difference between these three is their way of seeing. Our personal morality is often determined by our perception of events. Three people passed by this person in need, but only one really saw the person. The priest and the levite did not see a person, a fellow human being in need, what they saw was an object that had the capacity to render them ritually impure. What they saw was a body covered in blood – in the worst case scenario this man was already dead, and in that case touching a corpse would really have rendered them highly impure. But even if he was still alive, his wounds and blood would have been enough to sully their ritual impurity and render them unable to go to the Temple and carry out their official duties. So their compassion, a natural human response to a fellow human being’s suffering is not engaged, because what they see is an object. The Samaritan on the other hand does see a fellow human being and the word used in Greek to describe his reaction is far more visceral than what is translated by the word pity or compassion. The Greek word is “esplanisthe,” which describes a reaction that you feel in your gut. Our gut reaction of compassion is the motor of our moral life. But all too often this innate sense of compassion and sympathy with a fellow human being is blocked by beliefs and traditions that we have absorbed from the ambient culture. The windows of our eyes have been clouded over by these biases and prejudices. As a result, our God-given gut-reaction of compassion is stymied and cannot act as the motor of our moral compass. We lose our bearings and become inured to the human suffering around us.
Studies have been done that have shown that most ordinary people are prepared to show compassion to a limited group of people that they identify as lying within concentric circles of association. The people who have the most claim on our love and compassion lie in our very inner circle – our family – a very select group for whom we would be prepared to help out at considerable cost to ourselves. Then comes the next concentric circle of close friends can still elicit enough sympathy from us to warrant some small sacrifices of our time, our money and access to our network of contacts etc. Then there are acquaintances where sometimes we find ourselves conflicted and wonder if the relationship we have with them lays enough claim to our sympathy and love in order for us to help them out. This theory that there are those who have more of a claim over our love and compassion recently made the headlines when it was espoused by J.D. Vance in an ill-fated attempt to enshrine it in Catholic Social teaching. J.D. Vance got called out for such a stance by many Catholic moral theologians who pointed to Jesus’ teaching as espousing the very opposite notion.
If the parable of the Good Samaritan has anything to teach us, it is surely that Jesus is calling us to do away with the notion that there are people who are more worthy of our love and compassion than others. Jesus is surely calling us to do away with the concentric circles of concern that we use to adjudicate who deserves access to our limited love and compassion. We should note how Jesus flips the question that the scribe puts to him. While the scribe asks him “who is my neighbour?” Jesus at the end of the parable flips the question and asks the scribe “which of these three men made himself a neighbour to the man attacked by brigands?” Jesus is trying to show us that we cannot pre-determine who is worthy of our love and compassion. We have a choice every day to make ourselves neighbours to the people who we come across on along our path. Our neighbour is anyone who we encounter along our path who needs our help.
I’d like to end with another short story:
A guru asked his disciples how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.
“It’s when you can see an animal in the distance and can tell whether it is a horse or a cow,” responded one of his disciples.
“No that’s not right” said the guru
So one of his other disciples tried his luck “it’s when you can look at a tree in the distance and can tell whether it is a mango tree or a guava tree.”
“No, wrong again,” said the guru
“Well then what is it?” asked the disciples in unison
“When you look into the face of any man and recognize in him your brother, when you look into the face of any woman and recognize in her your sister. If you cannot do this, not matter what time it is by the sun, it is still night for you.”
Questions for reflection
1. Do I use a system of concentric circles to adjudicate who is worthy of my love and compassion?
2. How might my own traditional beliefs and culture be blocking a response of compassion to some human suffering that I see around me?
3. How might I educate my perception so as to be more sensitive to human suffering around me?
15th Sunday in OT – Lk 10: 25-37
By Fr Isaac Fernandez SJ
English