The Good Samaritan

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

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

Lost & Found - The two sons

The parable of the prodigal son is probably the most renowned short story of all times. It is indeed a masterpiece and in some way the ex libris of the Gospel. Traditionally known as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”, it is also recognized as the parable of the two sons because the less commendable attitude of the elder son is also an integral part of the story; for this same reason some call him the less wicked of the two bad sons, and finally, by transferring the focus from the sons to the Father, there are also those who call it the parable of the Merciful Father.

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them.

Then Jesus said… - Jesus introduces this parable by linking it to the previous two, that of the lost sheep and the lost coin. The ones lost inside the house but still within the fold, that is, the coin, the 99 sheep and the elder son, all come to symbolize the Pharisees. The others lost outside the fold, that is, the one lost sheep and the prodigal son, both represent the publicans, the prostitutes and sinners in general. For Jesus, both groups are sinners in need of forgiveness, both are sick and in need of healing. In truth, as the Scripture says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). Christ died for all because all are sinners.

Father, give me the share of the property… - According to the Jewish law, a father could not dispose of his property as he wished. In this situation, the elder son had the right to two thirds and the younger son to one third of the property (Deut. 21:17). In this third parable, the drama is brought into focus. It no longer deals with the loss of a sheep, or a coin, and not even parts of a property; what concerns this father is the loss of his son.  In order to understand his affliction, let us recall Jacob’s anguish when he judged that he had lost Joseph, at that time his youngest and most favorite son by Rachel, the woman he loved at first sight and for whom he had to labour 14 years.

The tragedy of this father, implicit in the parable, is the ingratitude of his younger son. To ask for the inheritance before the death of his father, is like telling him: “For me you have already died and therefore the inheritance must be divided; what or who you are means nothing to me, only what you have; since I no longer want to live with you, I am not waiting around for you to die; I want now what already belongs to me!”

So he (the father) divided his property between them – Despite being profoundly offended by his son’s ingratitude, the father neither argues nor tries to convince him that what he intends to do is wrong. He knows all too well that life will teach his son with heartaches what he could not teach him with love; failures and sufferings are oftentimes the integral part of the learning process. In fact, we generally learn more from our mistakes than from our successes; in this sense, in good faith “there is no evil out of which good does not come".

In respecting the freedom of man, the Almighty God reveals his powerlessness. We can compel children to do what is good, but with adults, goodness must come from their own free choice. Alike God many parents have to stand by and watch in desperation as their children destroy their lives through vices or laziness without being able to do anything.

Women are nowhere to be found in this parable because women in those days did not own any properties nor could they inherit any; but we see one father with attitudes and traits that are traditionally more in tune with those of a mother from which we can say that the woman, meaning the female character, is also figuratively present in this parable.

A few days later (…) gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, (…) he began to be in need. (…) But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!

He came to himself – It was necessary to fall deeply before he would come to himself and take responsibility for his situation; he had to suffer deep hunger pangs, and fall to the state of being a pig keeper, the most impure of all animals whose pods he could not even have to ease his hunger, before he became aware of his wrongdoings.

Deus intimior intimo meo est (St. Augustine) – God is beyond my inmost self so that the path to God is through my innermost being; therefore when we walk to God, we walk towards a greater awareness of ourselves. Similarly, when we return to God like the prodigal son did, we come back to ourselves; but while being outside of self, like the drug addicts and alcoholics, the prodigal son walks haggardly fleeing from God and from himself.

He does not embrace the reality of being a child of God, hence in some way, he goes back to his “animality”, to the time of evolution of species when human beings still primitive did not have the awareness of selves. While possessed by a passion or a vice, when we do evil we walk outside of ourselves and lose self-awareness, self-control, and identity.

I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” So he set off and went to his father...

He decides to go back home not out of remorse but out of hunger... primum vivere deinde filosofare… by returning he still only has his own self-interest in mind; he goes back because he is hungry and needs more things; he does not go back because he misses his father, but rather in his father’s house even the servants are better off than him as a pig keeper. He is not worthy of being a son, as he says in his preparatory speech, nor does he appear interested in being a son.

The prodigal son wants to impose a penance on himself; he wants in some way to make restitution, to compensate for what he has done, but the father does not let him finish the speech that he had prepared beforehand and embraces him after hearing only part of his confession. God does not need our restitution nor our penance to forgive us; God forgives and forgets. But then, why purgatory? It is a necessity of our human nature and not that of God; because God forgives us more easily and more readily than we forgive ourselves.

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate.

At a distance, it is not the son who first sees the father, but the father who sees the son whom he has been waiting for because he has never stopped waiting, never forgot him nor did he get on with his life, as people usually do. On the contrary, he never gave up on him but lived in the hope that he would return one day. When we move away from God, the place that we occupy in His heart is not taken up by someone else and so it remains always empty until we come back to Him if ever we do come back.

The son makes a small attempt to reconcile with his father, but it is the father who makes the biggest move towards reconciliation because he never gave the son up as hopelessly lost. So when the son eventually appears as a labourer, without any resentment and full of compassion the father receives him back as a son, embraces him, something that no boss does to a worker, kisses him like one kisses a beloved son, and treating him as an equal, he does not let his son kneel before him. He then places a signet ring on his son’s finger as the seal of power and dresses him in the better garment of a beloved son, like Jacob did for Joseph. Finally at the end he orders the fatted calf to be killed to celebrate and rejoice at his son’s return.

Now his elder son (…) heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” Then he became angry and refused to go in…

The son who transgressed learned a lesson; how often do we need to be deprived of things before we appreciate their worth. The younger son understands now what the love of the father is because he had denied it and had fled far from it. The elder son never comes to understand it. It is precisely in this sense that St. Augustine develops his theology of “Felix Culpa” referring to the fall of Adam, and Luther adds his paradox “pecca fortiter, sed crede fortius”, if one sins, sin greatly because only a great sin is cause for a great conversion. The “peccata minuta” of the elder son, however, is not enough to dissuade him from his sinful life.

‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” Then the father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”’ (Lk. 15:11-32)

The sin of the younger son is his rejection of his father’s paternity, and the sin of the elder son is the same; he also does not regard himself as a son but rather as a hired hand, perceiving his father as a righteous taskmaster whom he obeys not out of love but out of fear. Like the rich young man and the Pharisees who never transgressed a single commandment, and who only complied with the letter of the law because, as Jesus put it so well, their interiors were full of filth and so is the interior of the elder son as is clear by the way he describes his brother’s dissolute living. The elder son is, in some way, like those who only behave well before law enforcers and authority; the ones rightly depicted by the saying “when the cat’s away, the mice will play.”

If the elder son had been a true son, he would have shared his life and belongings with the father and behaved according to the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). Furthermore, if he had been a true son, it would not have been necessary for him to ask for a young goat because he still had the inheritance that was due to those who are and behave like children of God (Matt. 25).

How the prodigal son spent his father’s money we do not find out from the narrator but from the elder son; throughout the text there is no mention of prostitutes until the elder son mentions them; this is the sort of accusation that a puritan mentality would make in order to ask for a harsher punishment. In the Church we have not yet gotten rid of that sort of moral theology that judges all sexual matters as serious and mortal sins but turns a blind eye to the sins of social justice.

Furthermore, if we psychoanalyze the emphasis the elder son gives to the way his brother spent the money, we come to the conclusion that after all the prodigal son only did what his elder brother always wanted and wished to do but never had the courage to do so. It is, therefore, a question of envy what the elder son feels for his brother.

Unlike the younger son who is genuine in his calling of ‘Father’, the elder son upon addressing the Father does not treat him as such. He also does not treat his brother as a brother referring to him only as “this son of yours”. When God is not the Father, then others are not brothers, but rather enemies or rivals towards whom we feel envy, resentment, and hatred. Many speak of the love of neighbour as being the most important thing and as the proof that we love God, but it is only when we love God that our neighbour is truly a neighbour and not a stranger or a rival.

A catechist after having told the parable of the prodigal son to a group of children asked them to recount it in their own words. One child retold the parable as such until the moment the prodigal son appeared on the horizon. Then he said that when the father saw the son he grabbed a club and began to run towards him.

On the way. he met his elder son who asked him where he was going, and the father told him that he was going to meet his brother. Upon hearing that his brother had returned, he too grabbed a club and they both went to meet the wretched prodigal son; after beating him with the clubs and discharging their anger for what he had done, they took a deep breath and looking at each other satisfied said, ‘Now let us feast, eat and drink to the health of this rascal!’

This child expressed what any father in this world would naturally have done, but this is not the way God is - for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are yours ways my ways, says the Lord (Isa. 55:8).

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC