The Good Samaritan: Part Five

This is a seven part project for a Synoptic Gospels course at Holy Apostles College and Seminary taught by Father William C. Mills. It will cover the timeless parable of the Good Samaritan in modern life. Comments, as always, are greatly appreciated! Thank you for reading and participating.

Part Five:  Who is the Samaritan aiding?

When the priest and the levite walked past the dying man on the road they may have asked themselves, “Is this man my neighbor?”  “Am I obligated to help him?”  Then comes the Samaritan who did not ask those questions, but rather decided for himself that he was the neighbor.  Pope Benedict XVI in the book, “Jesus of Nazareth” explains that the answer to who is your neighbor does not lie outside of you nor does it depend on who that person is, where that person is or what kind of trouble that person is in.  The answer lies within each of us.  What will we do?  When the Samaritan sees this man in such a state, when he comes near him, he is “moved with compassion.”  He nursed his wounds, cared for him, and took him to a safe place.  This word for “moved with compassion” in Hebrew refers to a mother’s pity and mercy for her own child.  The Latin word is misericordia.  This same meaning is used by Isaiah in the prophecies about how God will save His people:

“Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will not I forget you.”  Isaiah 49:15  (See post on this verse here.)

The Samaritan shows us how to find the answer about who is our neighbor, and if we search within then the answer is for all other men, women and children to be our neighbors in the world too.  We love them as we love ourselves.  We try to love them and see them as God sees them.  This isn’t always easy, but the shining truth in the parable is that by coming to the aid of our fellow man, if we change our hearts and minds to see our neighbors as God sees them, we are really coming to the aid of ourselves. 

Remember the not-so-sincere lawyer who asked Jesus the question about how to possess eternal life.  This is his answer.  The early Church Fathers also explained this parable in terms of the relationship between God and man allegorically.  The man lying half dead on the road the victim of the robbers is mankind fallen under the oppression of evil.  The priest and the levite are the history of man and his societies, walking by and legalistically missing the truth, denying compassion.  Governments can’t love, people love.  The Samaritan is like Christ, saving the afflicted by pouring wine and oil, the Sacraments, to heal the wounds and by taking the man to the inn, the Church, to be safe until he returns.   

Scripture:

“But a certain Samaritan, being on his journey, came near him: and seeing him, was moved with compassion:  And going up to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine: and setting him upon his own beast, brought him to an inn and took care of him.”  Luke 10:33-34

How does becoming the neighbor make the other person count as yourself?  Are there more parallels to the allegory?