July 13, 2025

15^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) 

“Compassion Interrupts Our Journey”

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio 

 
“Who is my neighbor?” asks the scholar of the Law. He wanted from Jesus a precise definition. Did neighbor mean the person who lives next door, a relative or a fellow Jew? Perhaps he wanted to know how far his obligation to love, to be charitable, extended. He might have asked, “What is the minimum I have to do and still be in God’s favor?” We also find this attitude in St. Peter’s question to Jesus: “Lord, how often must I forgive my brother who wrongs me? Up to seven times?”
 
Our Lord responds with a parable—the only parable where Jesus gives a specific location…because his hearers would surely know it—the 17 mile stretch of wilderness from Jerusalem to Jericho known at the “Bloody Way.” Travelers along that road faced dangers of falling, wild animals, and thieves hiding in its many caves. Unsurprisingly then, Jesus presents a crime scene. A man was robbed and left to die by his assailants.
 
A priest and a Levite pass by—men of religion and piety —those from whom one would expect compassion. They see the dying man but cross to the other side of the road. They do nothing—a great sin of omission. Pope Leo points out that “the practice of worship does not automatically lead to being compassionate.” These temple officials, after a long stay in Jerusalem, were in a hurry to get home. Haste, so present in our lives often prevents us from showing compassion. Our own journey, our own concerns we think have to take precedence, we cannot stop.
 
Jesus then introduces someone who is willing to stop. But he is the most unlikely character: a Samaritan. There was a deep, mutual enmity between Jews and Samaritans. Jews despised Samaritans because they had mixed with the pagans who had entered their land. Jews disowned them and forbade them to help build of the Temple. So, they rejected Jerusalem and its worship and built their own temple. If Jews wanted to offend, they would call someone a Samaritan.
 
What a shocking reversal the Lord’s parable takes! The devout and righteous fail the test and the one who is least expected is the neighbor who is compassionate.
 
Unlike the others, the Samaritan tends to the man’s wounds and takes him to an inn to be cared for. He did not ask the identity or background of the dying victim. He did not ask, “Why should I help? He’s not my responsibility.” The Samaritan did not keep his distance. He got involved, he devoted his time cleaning and binding the wounds.
 
He spent his money to assist and is lavish in his generosity. Pope Leo said, the afflicted man was not “a package to be delivered but someone to be cared for.” He was not a parcel to be left on the doorstep of inn. The Samaritan would return to check on his care because the dying man was a person with dignity, a child of God.
 
When Jesus asked the scholar who was neighbor to the dying man, the scholar was forced to acknowledge that it was the Samaritan but he could not bring himself to say “the Samaritan” but rather “the one” who treated him with compassion? Pope Leo’s reflection on this parable provides us with food for our own thoughts this week:
 
“Brothers and sisters, when will we too be capable of interrupting our journey and having compassion? When we understand that the wounded man in the street represents each one of us.
 
And then the memory of all the times that Jesus stopped to take care of us will make us more capable of compassion.
 
Let us pray, then, that we can grow in humanity, so that our relationships may be truer and richer in compassion. Let us ask the Heart of Jesus for the grace increasingly to have the same feelings as him.”