Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Samaritans

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite knew that the Law told them to love God and love their neighbors. Nevertheless, they walked by a bloodied, beaten man lying in a ditch. The Samaritan, though, knew that you don’t pass such people by; you go to their aid. The parable clearly tells us we must try to be like the Samaritan.

But that is not always easy. In our world, plenty of people are lying in ditches, some literally as in the case of the homeless or those who are victims of violence and war. It can be a challenge to know how to help them in effective and lasting ways, but many individuals and organizations are working hard to improve these situations and provide for the people caught in them.

Others are lying in ditches figuratively, such as those trapped in resentment, anger, bitterness, cynicism, addiction, or self-hatred, robbed of their dreams or beaten up by injustice and society’s callousness towards them. It’s not always easy to know how to reach out to them effectively, and, paradoxically, some of them may even reject our efforts, leaving us to be Samaritans whose help is not welcome.

Still, we can always pray for them, remember they are there and try our best to do what we can for them. They are our “neighbors,” after all, and Jesus tells we have to love our neighbors (in fact, love even our enemies). And, though we might not always be able to help as we’d like, we can’t shirk our responsibility to try to be like the Samaritan whom Jesus held up for us to imitate.