Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 7-10-16
Peace be with You,
Last week, we found ourselves being sent out on mission by Jesus as His disciples to proclaim the gospel message to all peoples. This week, we are given further instruction on what it means to be a disciple in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The parable of the Good Samaritan springs from a question addressed to Jesus by a “scholar of the law,” who asks Jesus what ‘he must do to inherit eternal life?’ To this question, Jesus responds that we must follow the law, which the scholar rightly summarizes by relating the two-fold precept of love, i.e. love of God and love of neighbor. In order to perhaps test Jesus or to learn from Him, the scholar asks Jesus a pretty logical question based upon this: who is my neighbor?
Based upon the conversation that came beforehand, we may read this parable as an allegorical explanation of how we should live the two-fold precept of love. For the Church Fathers, the Good Samaritan is none other than Jesus Himself. It is He Who meets the man half-dead on the side of the road, whom they saw as Adam, the stand-in for the fallen human race; half-dead because they had fallen from the life of perfect relationship with God, yet not fully dead for they still bore God’s image, making them capable of coming to know God, and therefore capable of being restored to His friendship. However, as half-dead, the fallen human family was in need of care, of reconciliation with their God to become fully alive once again. Thus, God Himself became man (symbolized by the animal upon which He places the injured man), and brings the injured human family to an inn for care, paying the cost of their healing out of His immense love for God the Father, and the human family (symbolized by the 2 denarii). This place of care, the Church Fathers saw as the Church, the place of healing for the human family, for it is the place where they meet and are brought back into full communion with their God, thus enabling them to live the full life they were created for.
The story does not end here, however, for we are not called to be passive in salvation history, but active. Thus, having experienced healing, we are to be instruments of healing to the world (our neighbors) by being imitators of the Good Samaritan, Jesus Christ, Who this day calls us to “go and do likewise.”
Your servant in Christ,
Tony
Tony Crescio is the founder of FRESHImage Ministries. He holds an MTS from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a PhD candidate in Christian Theology at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on the intersection between moral and sacramental theology. His dissertation is entitled, Presencing the Divine: Augustine, the Eucharist and the Ethics of Exemplarity.
Tony’s academic publications can be found here.