This Sunday we are treated to the beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan. Too often, this parable is presented to urge love for our neighbour. And it is true, this is one of the messages. But to limit our understanding of the parable to just our relationship with our neighbour is to miss a crucial point and forget that the entire conversation between the lawyer and Our Lord takes place in the context of two commandments, the first being to love God!
Fr Rosario Oliveira, the Parish priest here at the Sé, has often pointed out that we cannot love God, if we do not know Him first. Similarly, we cannot love our neighbour properly, if we do not first love our God.
To love God, is to look for Him actively, and this is exactly what the Fathers of the Church did. They were Christological in their reading of the scriptures, i.e. looking for Our Lord, or a foreshadowing of Him, when they read the scriptures. And this is also what they did with the parable of the Good Samaritan, finding in this parable, not just the lesson to love our neighbours, but a relationship between Our Lord and ourselves.
Allow me, dear brothers and sister, to us address the parable one line at a time to see how this allegorical reading works.
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.”
The Fathers read this line as a reference to Adam, our first father, who was expelled from the heavenly Jerusalem, with Jericho being the world in which we live. He:
“stumbled upon some robbers, who, after they had both stripped him and subjected him to a beating, went away and left him half-dead.”
Like Adam, we too are on the road to Jericho, and according to St. Ambrose, these robbers are the angels of night and darkness, who strip our souls of the clothes of spiritual grace that we have received. Remember that in baptism we receive a purified soul, a white garment that we are to present unstained to Our Lord on our death. If we preserve unstained the garments that we have put on, St. Ambrose teaches us, we cannot feel the robbers’ blows. Without this protective garment, however, these spirits can inflict wounds on our soul. Persistently wounded, we are left on this road, wounded and dying – because this is how our life, without the salvation that Christ provides, will end; condemnation to eternal death.
“a priest was going down [from Jerusalem] on that road; …. Likewise, a Levite, when he came upon that place and saw him, also passed by on the other side.”
According to the Fathers, the intention was not to critique priests and ritual. On the contrary, it points out that Our Lord can offer salvation, which the Law and the prophets could not.
The portion of the parable that comes next, is sublime:
“a Samaritan who was traveling on a trip came across him, and when he saw him he felt compassion for him.”
In the figure of the Samaritan, rejected and spurned by Jewish Orthodoxy, the Fathers recognized the figure of Our Lord. And they recognized Him by compassion He feels for the victim, i.e. humankind. Compassion, is what motivated Our Lord to come down from the heavenly Jerusalem to travel to Jericho to save us from eternal death.
He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them.
The bandages, oil and wine, are the sacraments that He offers to bind our wounded soul. Confession being the bandage, oil in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation and, wine which is transformed to His Most Precious Blood which sustains us on our journey.
Then he put him on his own mount, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him, and whatever you spend in addition, I, on my return journey, will repay you.’”
Origen, suggests that the mount on which the victim is placed, is in fact the body of Our Lord. And why not, since He has indeed offered His very body to carry us to heaven. The innkeeper is the Church, the provider of the sacramental care that Our Lord instituted, and the two denarii the Old and the New Testament, that guide us. And the final flourish, a reference that Our Lord will return, and repay the innkeeper for his troubles beyond what he has been paid for.
My dear brothers and sisters, the morale of this parable is that to love our neighbour is to have compassion for them, just as Our Lord had compassion for us. We can have this compassion, only if we bind ourselves to His own passion, which He shares with us through His Body and Blood. In other words, we can love our neighbour, only because we love Our Lord and imitate Him in his compassion for His neighbours, us. If we are faithful to our communion with Him, then we will be like the innkeeper, who will be repaid, on the Day of Judgement, on the return of the King.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipated Sunday mass on 12 July 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Goa.)
(Image reference: Christ as the Good Samaritan, contemporary Russian icon.)
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