10 July 2022
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“And who is my neighbor?”
What a question! And what an answer. The scholar asks who his neighbor is in order to see just how far his responsibility toward others must go. In other words, he wants to know how much harder he must work in order to gain eternal life. Jesus responds by telling one of the most beloved parables in his repertoire: the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Why this response? Why not simply say, “Your neighbor is the person you encounter who is in need?” Because this scholar of the law did not need another law to obey; he needed a conversion of heart. For Heaven is not a night club wherein one needs to know the password in order to gain entrance. Nor is it a prize gained after solving a series of riddles, nor is it a destination one reaches after following the correct path. Heaven is about relationship with God and with neighbor, about establishing bonds of love between oneself and those you hope to be with in paradise: God and those who will—for eternity—be your neighbor. God desires the salvation of all of us (1 Timothy 2:4) and though not all will desire the same for themselves, He teaches us that we must love all people, especially those in need, bearing in mind that this person (or their angel) will bear witness at our judgement, and that we might one day be in communion with them in Heaven. How can we hope for Heaven if we cannot love?
Hence the great commandment is to love God with all our being, and our neighbor as ourselves; “Love,” St. Paul writes, “does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law,” (Romans 13:10). The priest and Levite in the parable, men whose lives are dedicated to the service of God and living His Law, fail to observe the Law because they failed to love the wounded man. They passed him by because he was bleeding, and to touch blood was to become unclean: they used this law as an excuse to do nothing for him. Yet the Samaritan, the foreigner and—worse, pretender to the Jewish faith—loved the victim and cared for his every need, seeing him not as a stranger, but as a neighbor and an opportunity to love God.
Who is my neighbor? Jesus teaches us that our neighbor is the one God desires to be with Him in paradise and is laboring intensely to redeem. In short: everyone.