But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”
Which of these three, do you think, was neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ (Luke 10:30-37)
Jesus’ second best known parable after the prodigal son is no doubt the parable of the Good Samaritan. Western culture was influenced so much by this parable that today the term "Samaritan", rather than referring to an inhabitant of Samaria, applies to any person who is caring and compassionate, and helps those who are in need.
How to inherit eternal life
This parable is inserted in the context of a dialogue that Jesus has with a lawyer who quizzed him on what one must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus, like a good non-directive psychotherapist following the style of Carl Rogers, helps him to find for himself the answer to his own question by referring him to his reading of the Law. The lawyer says in response what Jesus wants to hear; that is, instead of mentioning the actual laws, he gives to love the status and importance of a law, guessing that is precisely what Jesus would have done.
The answer given by the doctor of the law is a synthesis of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, and he arrives at it by combining the love of God described in the Book of Deuteronomy (6:4-8) with the love of neighbour outlined in the Book of Leviticus (19:18). Jesus applauds this association and simply exhorts him to put it into practice if he wants to enter into eternal life.
Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. (1 John 4: 20)
From this text we can conclude that the love of God that does not manifest itself in the love of neighbour, is not real nor genuine. On the other hand, we can only love our neighbour when we understand that what we do to others, we are doing it to God, and as the Gospel says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt.25:40).
This ensues from the reality that the love of God is the primordial and the most important love, because it is only when we see God as our Father that we see others as our brothers. If God is not the Father of all, then my neighbour is not my brother but rather my rival, my enemy, someone whom I envy or fear. Regardless of how well-off our biological siblings might be, we do not envy them. In this same way when I truly love God like a Father then every person who surrounds me, rich or poor, big or small, near or far, is my biological sibling since God being the Creator of all is the Father of all.
Christianization of grammar
Who is my neighbour? – Like the other lawyers who approached Jesus before, this one also does not come to affirm his teachings. The first question is only a preparation to his second one, in which he intends to denounce the fact that Jesus does not accept differences between people. Therefore, the second question assumes that there are people who can be considered as neighbours and others, on the contrary, not. And so it was with the Jews; they were God’s chosen people; therefore for them a neighbour was someone of the same tribe and religion; the rest were Gentiles or pagans, and as such were not included as their neighbours.
Distinction of persons does not exist for Jesus. This is the message he intends to convey with the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the middle of the Judean desert lies a wounded man; no one knows who he is since nothing is said about his identity. His face must have been badly battered since no one could tell his ethnicity from his facial features; he is probably half dead or unconscious and as he was unable to speak, no one could guess from his language, dialect or accent which tribe he came from. Similarly, one could not get any information from his clothing since he had been stripped of them.
Jesus does not give any details about the poor man’s origin because they are not important. The only thing that matters to Him is that he is a human being. Human dignity is not dictated by a person’s ethnicity, language, religion or politics, but simply by the fact of being a human person.
God is the Father of all so that when we pray the ‘Our Father’, no one should be excluded from the pronoun “our”. In fact, if we took our faith to its logical conclusion, we would have to modify the grammar and abolish all personal pronouns except three: I + You = We.
Seeing myself as a free autonomous being, “I” am distinct from everything and everyone that surround me; then I look around and recognize an alter ego, a “You”, different from me, but of same dignity; finally, the fact that we need one another, on terms of equal rights and duties, a new entity comes about as a “We” that means a “You” and an “I” together; apart from these, the remaining pronouns we can discard since they are discriminating.
The pronouns “he”, “she”, “you” (in plural) and “they” establish irrelevant differences regarding the dignity of the human person. Making distinctions where they are not important is oftentimes a disguised form of discrimination. Once more, as we are Christians, the ‘our’ of ‘Our Father’ should encompass all people without distinction and discrimination.
Habitat on anatomy
Science tells us that human beings come from a common stock. With the Greek philosophy in mind, the dignity of a human person is to be linked to the essence and not to the accidents of life. What Jesus wants this lawyer to understand is that the differences in ethnicity, gender, social position, class, color of skin, type of hair etc., are accidents, that is, they are the vicissitudes of our existence and have nothing to do with the essence. The dignity of the human person refers to the essence and not to the accidents. Jesus tells this parable hoping that the lawyer, his interlocutor, by himself would arrive at the conclusion that the neighbour of each human person is every human person.
Born out of a common origin in the Rift Valley of Africa some five million years ago, the physiological characteristics that are evident in human beings today are due somewhat to the morphological and climatic conditions of their surroundings where they have inhabited for many thousands of years. For example, it is noted that the skin colour is proportional to the distance from the equator: the closer a person lives to the equator, the darker the skin: the Congolese are the darkest human beings on earth; the north Africans are much lighter than the Congolese while the southern Europeans are lighter than the north Africans and the northern Europeans are even lighter than the southern Europeans.
Just as the distance from the equator has shown correlation with the skin colour, so it seems to have something to do with the colour of the eyes and hair: in Northern Europe, blues eyes and blonde hair predominate, central Europe brown eyes and brown hair and southern Europe till the equator black eyes and black hair. The size of the nose seems to be related to air temperature as in addition to filtering the air, the nose also heats it, so that in cold countries people tend to have larger noses.
The temperature and the incidence of sun also seem to have something to do with whether the hair is curly or straight. The frizzy hair of the Africans forms an air box which allows air to circulate, in this way protecting the head from the sun’s ray and from the heat. Similarly, the Asian eyes are related to the extreme climate of the Asian steppes where it is very cold and bright during the winter, and very windy and dusty during the summer.
The French Revolution “avant la letter”
In the western culture it was the French Revolution that did away with birthrights, the nobility and its so called “blue bloods”, and came up with the ideals that have been the corner stone of democracy: we are all equal at birth and equal under the law. But long before we were equal under the law we were already equal under God.
If we look closely, we will note that the ideologies of the French Revolution were not really the discovery of the revolutionaries of those days, but were already implicit in the commandment to love God and neighbour.
Freedom – This is implicit in the commandment to love God above all things since it is only when we love God above all things and persons, that we have the proper order and hierarchy in our hearts to become truly free. For in paying homage to a Transcendent Being I too transcend and rise above all things that are not of God; it is then and only then that I am truly free.
Equality – This is implicit in the commandment to love a neighbour as I love myself; another person is an alter ego, or another ‘I’, from where the concept of altruism arose. By being another ego or another ‘I’, this person is therefore not a stranger but someone of equal dignity, rights and duties. In the very same way that I love myself I should love anyone who is in front of me, not more not less; the measure of my self-esteem is the measure of my love for the other; other than this, there is no better affirmation of equality.
Fraternity – This word is derived from the Latin word ‘frater’ which means ‘brother’. One of the hallmarks of Christianity is the conviction that God is the Father of all, which makes us all His children and therefore siblings among us. For this reason, all that I do whether good or bad, I am doing it to a brother; furthermore, as Matthew (25:40) says, it is actually Christ, our elder brother, whom I am doing it to.
With the fairy tale of Cinderella and Prince Charming in mind, there is a proverb that states that love either springs up between equals i.e. people of the same social status, or makes people equals, that is, raises the partner of lower social status to the level of the higher one. We conclude then that fraternity and equality are one and the same thing. Consequently, we are left with the love of God as the way to attain freedom and the love of the neighbour as the way to attain equality, justice and peace. Freedom or love of God is the corner stone of individual human life, and equality or the love of our neighbour the corner stone of human social life. They are complementary since one cannot exist without the other.
This being said, social differences like the caste system in India should never be accepted let alone be practiced in any reasonable society. Similarly, it is also unacceptable that the Muslims consider infidels all those who do not worship their god and do not live according to the Sharia law.
Religion as opium?
We disagree, of course, with Karl Marx when he affirmed that religion is the opium of the people. Religion per se is not an opium, but in practice it can be. A religion that creates differences between people, that leads me to relate with others differently, is the opium for the people because it alienates me, alienates others and creates hatred and strife. A religion that sets me apart from others, dehumanizes, prevents me from helping others and seeks excuses for not doing so is an opium. A religion that does not teach me ways to get out of my comfort zone, from my egocentricity, is not a religion at all.
Religion comes from the Latin word “religare” which means relation, therefore a true religion is one that motivates the greatest number of possible relations that are based on love. Therefore, the priest and the Levite that bypassed the person in need of help to avoid being tainted so that they could practice their religion, that is, to offer temple sacrifices, found in religion an excuse for not helping; such a religion is indeed the opium of the people.
Any particular religion is turned into the opium when it becomes an ideology that justifies and rationalizes natural selfishness and inactivity, to the point of killing the compassion that surges up naturally when one is confronted with human suffering and even animal suffering. Such a religion is a superstructure, in the language of Karl Marx, which dehumanizes individuals.
The priest and the Levite, something similar to a priest and a deacon of our times, are by their nature pontiffs; that is, bridges between God and men. Their function is to intercede to God for their fellowmen; to take God to men and men to God. While going to the temple to intercede for abstract men and women, they passed by a flesh and bone man lying at their feet.
Compassion then comes from the one least expected, from a man of trade in whom one would normally expect to find greed and a pursuit of personal gain in all circumstances. Again mercy comes from the one for whom time is money and all activities had to be lucrative. Being a businessman, if anyone had “excuses” to pass by it was the Samaritan, and yet, it is precisely he who stops and puts aside his agenda and tends to the afflicted man.
Perhaps by not being religious, the natural feeling of compassion is not ideologically suppressed, and so compassion and mercy, attributes of God not seen in those two clerics, are found in this Samaritan instead.
The Samaritan does not only feel compassion but more importantly, he acts upon it; there are many who feel but do nothing about it. His compassion is what makes him set aside his itinerary and personal life and put them on hold. Not only does he give his time and his ride while he himself continues the journey on foot, but he also opens his purse and pays the innkeeper for all the expenses needed to look after the wounded man, even offering to pay for any unforeseen ones should the case arise. The Good Samaritan becomes an icon of God’s mercy, and an example that Jesus invites us to follow with this parable.
Mercy: is the fundamental law that dwells in the heart of every person who looks sincerely into the eyes of his brothers and sisters on the path of life. Misericordiae Vultus by Pope Francis.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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