Beloved Parishioners,

I reflect with you “who is my neighbor”. This theme appeared in Luke’s gospel passages we read a few weeks ago. In Luke 10:25–37, Jesus responds to a lawyer’s question — “Who is my neighbor?” — with one of the most unsettling and revolutionary stories in all of Scripture: the parable of the Good Samaritan.

While today it may sound familiar or even comforting, to its original hearers, it was nothing less than a moral provocation. It overturned deep-rooted assumptions about religion, righteousness, and love.

To grasp the force of this parable, we must understand the historical and religious tension between Jews and Samaritans. This was not a polite disagreement — it was a bitter and enduring feud. The Samaritans, who inhabited the former Northern Kingdom of Israel, accepted only the Pentateuch and rejected the Jerusalem Temple, choosing instead to worship on Mount Gerizim. They traced their lineage to Ephraim and Manasseh, but their intermarriage with foreigners and construction of a rival temple rendered them impure and heretical in Jewish eyes. By the time of Jesus, hostility ran deep. Jews regularly avoided Samaritan territory, even when it meant longer journeys (cf. John 4:9). To cast a Samaritan as the moral exemplar — and the religious elites as the ones who failed — was to upend the entire worldview of Jesus’ audience.

In the parable, both a priest and a Levite encounter the injured man and pass by. Were they cruel? Perhaps not. Their avoidance may have been shaped by Levitical purity laws. According to Leviticus 21:1–3, priests were forbidden from touching a corpse except for immediate family. Numbers 19:11–13 declared that contact with the dead rendered one ritually unclean for seven days. If the man lying on the road appeared dead, touching him would have disqualified them from Temple service — the very core of their priestly identity. In other words, they may have chosen ritual correctness over moral responsibility. They preserved their purity at the cost of compassion. But in doing so, they missed the deeper purpose of the law — mercy. Jesus is not rejecting the Law of Moses; He is revealing its truest fulfillment: love. As St. Paul writes, “If I have all knowledge but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2). And Jesus Himself, quoting Hosea, reminds us: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matt. 9:13). This parable exposes a timeless and troubling tension: law without love is hollow, and religion without mercy is dangerous. When our fidelity to rules causes us to overlook the wounded, we are no longer walking with God — no matter how pious we appear.

So, we must ask ourselves: Do we withhold love based on race, tribe, religion, or past wrongs? Do we find it easier to be doctrinally “correct” than to be humanly compassionate? Do we only help those who are like us, or those we feel “deserve” our help?

The Samaritan’s help is not ordinary. It is extraordinary precisely because it breaks through every boundary. It defies prejudice: he aids a man who likely would have despised him. It is costly: he delays his journey, risks ritual impurity, spends his own money, and promises further care. And it reveals God’s mercy: the one thought to be outside the covenant becomes the vessel of divine compassion. In the Samaritan, Jesus reveals a love that transcends law, tribe, and expectation — a love that binds wounds without asking for credentials.

In a world still fractured by religious suspicion, ethnic conflict, and ideological pride, the Good Samaritan is not just a parable — it is a challenge, a rebuke, and a call to conversion. The priest and the Levite may have known the law, but only the Samaritan lived its heart. In him, we see the face of Christ, who stooped down to heal our wounds when we were broken and left for dead. He is more than a neighbor — he is a living icon of the mercy of God. May we go and do likewise. And may our mercy — like His — know no borders.

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