Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jan Wijnants (1670)
(Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year C; This homily was given on July 14, 2019 at St. Paul's Church in Cranston, R.I.; See Colossians 1:15-20 and Luke 10: 25-37)
Every Sunday we profess our faith in “one
God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and
invisible.” We believe God made
everything that is—the entire universe we live in—out of nothing. He made “all things, visible and invisible.”
God created the entire visible
world: he made the sea and the land, the mountains and the plains; God made the
creatures dwelling across the face of the earth and in the depths of the ocean. As the pinnacle of His creation He made you
and I, man and woman, in His own image and likeness. All of this creation can be seen and
observed, appreciated and accepted with a sense of awe and wonder.
But God also created all things invisible. What does that mean? Each of us has a spiritual soul. You cannot see it, yet it exists. We are made of body and soul, and our spiritual soul is invisible. God made the angels. We cannot see them either, but they are constantly around us. Each of us, we are taught, has at least one guardian angel (see Matthew 18:10). If you were to count the heads in the Church this morning you would have to multiply by at least two, because that is how many beings—human and angelic—are present here right now.
God created all of these, visible and invisible. St. Paul, in the Letter to the Colossians this morning, explains it this way:
Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible.
—Colossians 1:15-16
Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God. God is purely spiritual, and He cannot be
seen. He is the infinite and invisible
God. But suddenly He became visible when
Christ was born in Bethlehem. The God, “who alone has immortality and dwells in
unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see” (1
Timothy 6:16) became visible to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph,
and then to some shepherds, and finally, to an entire host of angels. He later became manifest in Galilee and
healed the sick, and forgave broken people that the world had forgotten. Thousands of people saw Him. They watched Him suffer and witnessed His
body fastened to the wood of the cross for the forgiveness of sins. They saw the God of love pouring Himself out
in agony, and they watched His body laid to rest in the tomb. They saw Him after He had risen from the
dead, and watched Him ascend into heaven.
St. Paul calls Him “the firstborn of all creation” and “the firstborn from the dead,” because He is the first one to rise from the dead, the first of many! It is in Christ, says St. Paul, that all things were created, visible and invisible.
St. Thomas Aquinas, often referred to as the “Angelic Doctor” for his teachings on the angels, along with many of the great teachers of the Catholic faith, speaks about what could be called a hierarchy of being. While it is true that all men and women are created equal, not all beings are equal! For instance, God is greater than all beings, whether visible or invisible. God has always existed, from all eternity. There never was a time that God did not exist. While everything and everyone came to be at some specific time, God simply is. Before all things came to be, God is.
Angels are like God in that they are spiritual and invisible, but there was a time that they did not exist. God created them, and they came into being. They are greater than us, because they are purely spiritual, and are not limited physically like we are.
Next, of course, is humanity. We are like the angels in our spiritual souls, but we also possess a body. In our corporality we are limited. An angel can move from here to California in a moment. If you and I want to do that, we have to take a airplane or a really long road trip! Jesus says that angels can always behold the face of His heavenly Father; we are not granted that amazing privilege here below.
The remarkable truth about our redemption in Christ, however, is that when God chose to save us and to open the gates to eternal life, He did not become an angel. God did not descend one level down the hierarchy of being (that itself would have been a tremendous act of divine humility). No, when God came to save us He descended two levels to become a man. As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews expressed it, “But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering and death, so that by the grace of God he may taste death for every one” (Hebrews 2:9).
The breathtaking reality of our redemption is that Christ united Himself to our humanity, and then ascended into heaven, taking humanity with Him! In the resurrection, we ascend with Christ and are united with God even above the angels. This is the meaning of St. Paul’s bold assertion in 1 Corinthians 6:3: “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” What an amazing exchange, and it all takes place through the body of Jesus Christ! The early Church Father, Tertullian, explains, “Caro salutis est cardo.” The flesh, or body, is the hinge of salvation. God has thrown open the gates to heaven, and He has used the body of Jesus Christ to do it!
Back down to earth, this amazing truth about our redemption reminds us that everybody, and literally every body, has the same value and dignity of God. Every terminally ill patient being cared for by hospice has infinite value; every unborn child has the same dignity and value as Jesus Christ; every young person, every elderly person, every man and every woman, is as valuable as God’s own Son. The tragedy in our Gospel this weekend is that the priest and the Levite have failed to recognize that; or having recognized it, they failed to act on it.
In the Parable of the Good Samaritan the priest and the Levite come upon this unfortunate victim of robbers, a person left half-dead on the side of the road. Not wanting to get involved and not willing to help him in his dire need, they both “passed by on the opposite side.” How different, the response of the Good Samaritan. Jesus says that he “was moved by compassion” when he saw that unfortunate man, and at length he helped him in practical and caring ways.
St. John Paul II, in his Apostolic
Letter Salvifici Doloris, The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering,
says that the Parable of the Good Samaritan belongs to the Gospel of
Mercy. What an odd thing to say! The word “Gospel” means “good news.” How can there be “good news” in
suffering? The good news, of course, is
that God has redeemed us, and He did it through the generosity of the
cross. His willingness to suffer and die
for us reveals God’s great mercy towards suffering and sinful humanity. The Parable of the Good Samaritan, by
comparison, does the same.
There are two things that the Good
Samaritan teaches us, says St. John Paul II, two essential responses that we
must embrace when it comes to the suffering of others. The first is that the Samaritan was moved to compassion. The suffering that we witness everyday should
move us, should motivate us; it should leave a deep impression on us because
every body, every individual person, matters. Secondly, not only compassion but also availability
must be our response to those who are suffering (See Salvifici Doloris,
#28). The Good Samaritan made himself
available to this man who had fallen victim to robbers. He approached the man, poured oil and wine
over his wounds and bandaged them; he brought that broken man to an inn, and
paid for his convalescence (see Luke 10:34-35).
Salvifici
Doloris offers a thorough theological
explanation of suffering and highlights the central point that the cross is a
mystery in our lives, not something that can be easily answered. We do not know all of the reasons why we
suffer. One meaning that is essential
for us as Christians, however, and something that communicates beautifully this
compassion and availability that should motivate us to action, is the universal
call to love. St. John Paul says that
suffering “is also present in order to
unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one's
"I" on behalf of other people, especially those who suffer (Salvifici Doloris, #29). Those who perhaps would not ordinarily be
willing to love are drawn to that generous gift of self in the face of
suffering.
In my own family we see this
mysterious reality at work on a regular basis.
My nephew suffers from a rare illness that caused him to go blind when
he was still a small child. He has
difficulty walking, speaking and doing most things that children his age accomplish
quite easily. Caring for him is challenging for my sister and her family. But when they take him out to any of a number
of local restaurants or shopping centers, it is often as if Taylor Swift just
walked into the room! People that have
seen him before, those who have laughed and joked with him, cannot wait to come
over and say hello. They want to place
their hand on his shoulder, and talk to him, listening to what he has to say. These are often young people who ordinarily
spend long hours staring into their smartphones, but suddenly they are drawn
out of themselves in order to love and care for another person who is
suffering. Suffering is “present in order to unleash love in the
human person.”
Where is Christ calling us this week
to show compassion for those who are suffering around us, and challenging us to
be available as he draws us more deeply into love? He has given each of us a soul that is
invisible, and surrounded us with angels that we cannot see. But we all have people in our lives right now
that are suffering. We can see them, and
should see them, clear as day. It could
be a physical illness or setback; it might be a personal crisis or a financial
one. People that we know and love may be
suffering from a mental illness, something that sadly remains somewhat of a
stigma in our culture, only adding to the weight of that person’s cross. Whatever it may be, God calls each of us to
love in the midst of suffering, to be Good Samaritans is a world where the
Gospel of Suffering continues to open hearts to the mystery of God’s healing
grace.
