posted on July 12, 2010 08:44
In today’s Gospel, the lawyer asked Jesus Christ: “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus answered him with a parable of the Good Samaritan which is the well-known parables that Jesus preached.
St. Augustine and other Church Fathers, like St. Ambrose, identified the Good Samaritan as Jesus himself. In the Quaestiones Evangeliorum 2.19 Augustine interpreted the parable of the Good Samaritan: The man who journeyed from Jerusalem to Jericho represents us, the humanity. Jericho beckoned and we left the holy city. But along the way, robbers attacked us and dumped us in a ditch, naked and half-dead. The robbers are the demons and the temptations of this world. Jesus- the Good Samaritan- shows perfect compassion. Samaritan means “guardian,” and therefore the Lord himself is signified by this name. He bandages our wounds and takes us to an inn, his Church. He gives the innkeeper, who is the apostle, two coins which are the two great commandments: to love God and to love ones neighbor, or the promise of life and of that which is to come.St. Augustine has another interpretation of the same parable in his first book of De Doctrina Christiana, where he investigates the dual love command which is also the immediate context of the parable in the gospels. He takes his cue from the commentary found on Jesus’ lips: “Go and do likewise,” and takes the parable as a moral lesson in neighbor-love. It teaches us that the wounded man is our neighbor whom it is our duty to help in his need, or whom it would be our duty to help if he were in need. Hence it follows that he whose duty it would be in turn to help us is our neighbor. For the name “neighbor” is a relative one, and no one can be our neighbor except to a neighbor. The parable of the Good Samaritan is not primarily a moral example but a speech-act which draws us into identification with the injured man, and which transforms our expectations, our horizons, by presenting a neighbor to us in the shape of our enemy.
This parable is not so much to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” but to respond to the query, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus told the lawyer, “Go, and do likewise”. By doing this, we join Christ in bringing to pass the salvation and eternal life of mankind. We may learn not to exclude anyone from our love as Jesus loves us all unconditionally.
Reverend Jimmy B. Hababag