Homily: 15 Sunday in Ordinary Time - July 14, 2019

Readings: Dt 30:10-14; Ps 69; Col 1:15-20; Lk 10:25-37

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Don't you just love Moses? In effect he told the Israelites: OK, folks, God's Law is really pretty simple...And you don't have to look for it, because it's already in your hearts.

And that Law, in all its simplicity, is clearly spelled out in today's Gospel passage from Luke: You must love God with everything you have...and love your neighbor as yourself. 

But how many of us do that?  How many of us instead use our minds, hearts, souls and strength to love the perishable things of the world? How many of us seem even to love ourselves more than we love God? And our neighbors? I suppose we tolerate most of them, but do we really love them? 

Consider all the thoughts that cross our minds in the course of a single day. How many are of God and how many are of the things of the world? Yes, indeed, loving God is hard when the world tries to extinguish the light of God's truth. There's a lot of darkness out there, brothers and sisters.

As Pope St. John Paul II often reminded us, the world's darkness is nothing other than a culture of death, one that surrounds us with its evils of war, terrorism, abortion, hatred, infanticide, euthanasia, and so much more. But God is the God of life, who calls us to love Him and each other, even in the midst of all this hatred.

"I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly" [Jn 10:10].

Indeed, how can we love God, while accepting these evils? How can we love our neighbor, but turn our backs on those in need?  Do we even understand whom we're called to love? Like the scribe in today's Gospel, will we too be surprised by the Lord's answer when we ask Him: "And who is my neighbor?" [Lk 10:29]

Well, he's not just the guy next door, the one who joins you for golf on Tuesday, or just the woman who plays Mahjong with you on Thursday...you know, all those folks we like, the ones who are amazingly just like us. 

No, Jesus gets a little radical as He redefines neighbor. 

\Our neighbor, He tells us, is the stranger, the one we've been taught to distrust. The one who's not at all like you and me. He's also the public sinner, the 20-year-old addict, the pusher, scared to death as he awaits trial in the county jail in Bushnell. She's the down and out, the homeless single mom with three kids, wondering how she'll keep her family together, where the next meal will come from. 

That's right, Jesus tells us, our neighbor includes all those wounded by life. And then Jesus challenges us: Stop what you're doing and care for my people.

To the priest and the Levite in the parable, God's house was the Temple in Jerusalem. But Jesus teaches his disciples that God dwells in the ditch alongside the road, that they can see His face in the faces of the beaten, the downtrodden, the oppressed, and, yes, in the faces of sinners.

About 45 years ago, out in Monterey, California, I was one of our parish's youth ministers. At one weekly meeting, while discussing the Good Samaritan, I asked the kids to tell the rest of us who in the parable they most closely identified with - the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan. 

I got the expected answers until this one young man said, "I can't identify with any of those guys. I'm more like the guy who got beat up. And no Samaritan has ever come along to help me."

It was a remarkable moment in the life of that small group of teens. At first everyone laughed, but then, as we talked about it, their opinions began to change. It gradually dawned on them that no one is immune from life's problems and difficulties, that sometimes every single one of us needs help, needs God's healing touch.

Years later when we were living in Massachusetts, our eldest daughter, Erin, chose to attend a college in California. So Diane and I decided to load up the old station wagon (and, believe me, it was old) and drive her there ourselves. 

Somewhere in Arizona, along an empty stretch of Interstate in the middle of the desert, the car's engine simply stopped and refused to start. I immediately did what every red-blooded American male does in such a situation. I opened the hood, stared blankly at the engine, and swore at it. My wife and daughter just prayed. 

Within minutes, though, three teenage Navajos in an old pickup stopped on the dirt service road that paralleled the highway and volunteered to drive to a service station a few miles down the road to get some help. But before they could leave, another car pulled over in front of us. The driver, also a Native American, but from Oklahoma, took one look under the hood and had the car running again in about three minutes. In a hurry, he just drove off before I even had a chance to thank him. And then, no longer needed, the three young Navajos gave us a smile and a wave and sped off down the dirt road trailing a cloud of dust.

Since that day I've often thought of those good Samaritans and how they took the time to stop and help this obviously befuddled white guy from Massachusetts.

If our roles had been reversed, would I have stopped for them? As much as I hate to admit it, probably not. How easy it would have been to rationalize a decision to pass them by. After all, we were in a hurry, anxious to get to our hotel before nightfall. Anyway, a state trooper would probably be along soon. And you can't be too careful, can you? You never know the kind of people you'll run into.

How easy it is to magnify our own needs to ensure they outweigh the more obvious needs of others. And by doing so we ignore the command of Jesus and His Church, the command to act always with justice and charity, to act as the Samaritan acted.

The Samaritan wasn't at all responsible for the victim's plight, but in justice he knew he still had to respond to the man's basic human needs.  Yet he didn't stop there, did he? No, he went on to tell the innkeeper that he would pay for all the man's expenses, something that in charity goes beyond anything human justice might require. 

You see, Jesus is telling us that because we are baptized into the Kingship of Christ, we each must reflect the justice of the Kingdom. We're called to go beyond, to give our lives for others, to give them in love without measure. We can do this only do through the grace of Jesus Christ, who makes us part of His Body, the Church, and lifts us up to heights far beyond our own capabilities  What did St Paul say in today's second reading?

'God wanted all things to be reconciled through Him and for Him, everything in heaven and on earth, when he made peace by his death on the Cross.' 

Brothers and sisters, the love of Jesus Christ, the love of His Cross, carries us beyond man's justice, bringing peace and healing where hope has been lost, and lifting us to the joys of God's Kingdom.

He calls each of us to continue His work, to be Good Samaritans to all God's people, and He's given us a roadmap with the path clearly marked. We're asked to obey His commandments and to love -- to love Him with all our being and to love each other. If we do this, He takes care of the rest.

Allow Jesus to make His home within you. This will happen today through the Eucharist, when we are called to Communion with God Himself. God doesn't force Himself on us, but if you allow Him, He will give you the strength you need to cope with any and all of life's challenges.  He will give you the courage you need to accept your calling. He wants us to do His work in the lives of those we touch, even the lives of strangers we encounter on Arizona highways.

Oh, by the way, after graduating from college and going on to earn her Master's degree in education, our daughter's first teaching job was at a mission school on a Navajo reservation.

St. Bonaventure School - Thoreau, NM

God does have a sense of humor, doesn't He?