Who is the Good Samaritan? Who is the Good Samaritan? Today’s homily is going to be a little
bit different. It’s going to be a little bit like a Bible study, because I want to go verse through
verse of this beautiful Gospel passage and teach what the early Church Fathers thought about
this.
The early Church Fathers were the ones that lived after the disciples died. Some of the early
Church Fathers began to be those first Bishops, first Apostles, So, if you think of some of them
like Saint Augustine later on but, St. Ambrose, a number of the great saints and how they first
interpreted scripture. It’s a very different interpretation than I think we are used to that leads
us to a deeper realization of what it means to love God with all of our heart, mind, and soul and
to love our neighbor as ourselves.
What is love? We hear in Paul’s letter to Timothy, not that we have loved God, but that God has
loved us. This is where love begins, by knowing that we are loved by God and concretely how
we are loved by God. So, we have this scholar of the law who is testing Jesus and he asks him
this question, after he talks about loving God and loving our neighbor, and he says, “Who is my
neighbor?”
Then, Jesus begins to tell this story. He says a man fell victim to robbers. As Jesus is telling the
story, he is trying to open their eyes to realize that Jesus is the good Samaritan. And the man
that fell victim to the robbers, the original man, was Adam. Adam lived in paradise. Satan
robbed him of that. Because of that, Satan robs each and every one of us of living in paradise.
It’s interesting because it says, he fell victim to the robbers and as he went down from
Jerusalem to Jericho. Jerusalem is known as the Holy City. It’s an image of the Kingdom of
Heaven. And the traveler was going from Jerusalem to this town of Jericho. Jericho, in Arabic
translates to, ‘city of the moon.’ And so, the idea is that this man was so far away from heaven,
he’s almost on the moon. That’s the distance that sin creates for us; that’s what Satan robs us
of, of being in Heaven.
Then it says they stripped him and beat him and went off leaving him half dead. In Baptism, we
are given a beautiful baptismal garment that we are to wear throughout this life and bring
unstained one day into everlasting life. But Satan desires to rip that garment off of us. Satan is
the one that wants to beat us, and leave us half dead. And that truly is what sin does to us, it
leaves us in this world, half dead.
And then he says, a priest happened to be going down the road and Jesus will explain that this is
the prophets of the Old Testament represented by the priest and when he saw him, he passed
by. So, even though there were prophecies, we weren’t quite getting it. Then, he says a Levite
came in his place; he represents the law of the Old Testament. So, God had revealed the Law
but we still weren’t getting it. And so, he passed by on the opposite side.
But then there was a Samaritan traveler; this is where Jesus is revealing that He is the good
Samaritan. He comes upon him and is moved with Compassion, at the site. The phrase, moved
with Compassion is very important because Luke, whenever he uses this phrase, is revealing
Jesus. There are many times in the Gospel where Jesus was moved with compassion. When he
saw the crowds and they were hungry and evening was growing before he would work the
miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. It says when he looked at the crowd, he was moved
with compassion. When the woman was hemorrhaging, Jesus was moved with compassion,
when he found the people that were possessed, the people that were ill, the people that were
blind, the people that were lame, his heart was moved with compassion. So, we hear this
revealed that the good Samaritan is Jesus because his heart is moved with compassion.
The next thing is that he approached the victim, he came close to the victim. We know that in
the incarnation, Jesus came from Heaven and took on human flesh so that he could be near us.
We heard in the first reading that he is not too distant, He’s actually very close. The word
Emmanuel means, ‘God with us.’ So, he comes near to this person and there’s a personal
encounter that he has with this traveler that is lying on the side of the road.
What does he pour over his wounds? Anybody remember? Wine and oil. What sacrament is oil
used in? Baptism, Confirmation, Priesthood, and Anointing of the Sick which we celebrate here
often. The sacrament is being revealed in this passage: the sacrament of strengthening and
confirmation and healing and anointing of the sick. And then, of course, we have wine and what
sacrament is that used for? Eucharist. So, he is revealing this image of us being saved through
Baptism, through anointing, through confirmation and through the Eucharist.
And it says, “Then he lifted him up on his own animal and took him to an inn and cared for him.”
He himself, Jesus, lifts us up on him, and I can’t help but think of the image of the good
shepherd. He lifts us onto his body…and he takes him into the Inn. The Church Fathers saw the
Inn as being the church, that it is Holy Mother Church now that cares for those that are broken,
that cares for those that are half dead, that cares for those that are poor.
And the next day he takes out two silver coins. Everything in scripture is always very
intentional. Two silver coins. What did we hear just before the beginning of the good
Samaritan? Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.
He’s revealing and saying, I’m going to give you these two ‘silver coins,’ the greatest
commandments. And then he says to the Innkeeper, Take care of him. If you spend more than
what I give you, I shall repay you on my way back.” He’s letting the Innkeeper know that he is
going to go away for a while but he will take care when he comes back. And when did Jesus go
away for a while? The Ascension. And when will he come back? The second coming. He is also
making an image that he is going to go away for a while, but he wants to take care of us still.
And he does so through the Church, through the Innkeeper, through our Holy Mother Church
that the poor belong to, that we belong to.
He then says, “I will repay you.” We heard a couple of Sundays ago in the Gospel of Luke, that
whoever gives up mother or father or house or lands or money for my sake will receive ten
times more, a hundred times more, a thousand times more in this life and eternal life to come.
What he is saying is I will repay you for taking care of those that are most vulnerable.
Jesus asked, “Which of these three in your opinion was the neighbor to the robber? He said, “the
one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus came to reveal that God treats us with mercy. The
whole passage is Jesus helping us realize that he is the good Samaritan and actually we are the
ones lying broken on the side of the road; we’re the ones that need to be restored from our
own way, that Satan has attacked us and broken us down and left us half dead. When we
experience that, Jesus healing us, restoring us, taking us onto himself, bringing us to the
Church, it’s only after all that that, he says this final line, “Go and do likewise.”
This is where we get to understand our roll now as the good Samaritan. It’s only after we
discover his love for us, only after we discover that we have actually been saved because
someone brought us to Holy Mother Church. Now we go and do likewise. The interesting thing
is he is also making it very clear that we are to love those who are poor, to love those who are
half dead, to love those who are away from the faith, to love those who are broken down. It’s
not a generic love; we are not supposed to pass that love off to someone else; we are not
supposed to even say government, you take care of it. The poor belong to us. The poor belong
to Holy Mother Church.
When Jesus does this, he’s showing that it ought to be a personal encounter. We can’t just
throw our money at something and expect someone else to do it. We, in some way, need to
personally encounter the poor. And so, as we hear this passage of the good Samaritan, may we
know how deeply loved we are by God. May we realize that Satan is constantly trying to strip
us, to attack us, to leave us half dead. But Jesus draws near and he brings us to the end. He
cares for us and he asks us to do what he did: “Go forth and do likewise.”
