A few years ago, in a story that shocked our city, a 17-year old girl was savagely beaten and left for dead near the Vendome Metro.  Apparently, she lay there for hours.  For who knows what reason – busyness, fear, apathy, confusion, hard-heartedness – her plight was ignored.  She remained in a coma for many months.  We do not know who her assailants were.  We do not know the motivations or the stories of those who walked by and literally did not see her, or of those who did see her, but looked the other way.  The report showed that although we are capable of great compassion in some instances, we can also be oblivious to human suffering in our midst, indeed on our very doorsteps.  

Every day, throughout the world, the story of the events on the Jerusalem to Jericho Road is replayed over and over again.  As violence, drugs, poverty, despair, mental illness, negligence, corporate irresponsibility, corrupt officials, religious and political extremism, and inhumanity take their toll, their victims – the “innocent” and the “guilty” alike – are left for dead on the side of the road, on the margins of our society. Who will be the Good Samaritans for our world today?   

In this Sunday's gospel, Jesus challenges his audience to consider what it means to be a good neighbor.  Three years ago this week, Pope Francis used the first foreign visit of his papacy to challenge the church and the world on the same theme.  He flew to the tiny island of Lampedusa, between Sicily and North Africa, to pray for the many African refugees and migrants who lost their lives trying to reach the shores of Europe.  He coined the memorable phrase “the globalization of indifference" to describe the world’s response to the refugee crisis, linking their plight to the question posed by Jesus in today’s parable: “Who is my neighbour?”  Three years later, his words are even more relevant:

“Today no one in the world feels responsible for this; we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility.   We have fallen into the hypocritical attitude of the priest and of the Levite of whom Jesus speaks in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  We look upon the brother half dead by the roadside, perhaps we think 'poor guy,' and we continue on our way, it's none of our business; and we feel fine with this.  We live in our little bubbles, and we become insensitive to the cries of others – not just as individuals, but as entire societies. In this world of globalization, we see now the globalization of indifference.”

In his homily – spontaneous, heartfelt, and unscripted – Pope Francis laments the loss of our capacity to weep at these painful situations – and therefore, to act in order to relieve human suffering.  His words call us to conversion:

“Let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty in the world, in ourselves, and even in those who anonymously make socio-economic decisions that open the way to tragedies like this. “Who has wept?” Who in today’s world has wept?  O Lord, in this Liturgy of repentance, we ask forgiveness for our indifference towards so many brothers and sisters, for our self-satisfaction, for closing our hearts to those in need.  We ask you, Father, for forgiveness for those who with their decisions at the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies. Forgive us, Lord!  O Lord, even today let us hear your question: “Who is my neighbour?” 

Where does our neighbour live today? Paris. Brussels. Orlando. Istanbul. Bangladesh. Baghdad. Syria. In soup kitchens and homeless shelters, in tenements and back alleys; in places where even in the presence of material wealth, we meet sadness, loneliness, pain, betrayal and despair.  How can we feel the pain of others – not in a way that cripples or depresses us, but which moves us to action to help relieve their suffering?  This Gospel calls us to expand our “moral perception”: that is, our “ability to notice the morally relevant features of a situation, and our readiness to respond appropriately.” (William Spohn SJ, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics) Jesus teaches the parable of the Good Samaritan because he knows that a good story, well-told, has the power to touch our hearts, to probe our consciences, to expand our moral universe.   

The details of the story are familiar: a man beaten, robbed, left for dead.  Three people notice him.  But only one truly sees him.  The wounded man enters the field of vision of the priest and Levite, but not their field of compassion.  Why is this? Were they also afraid of being attacked, and suffering the same fate? Were they panic-stricken, paralyzed by helplessness?  Were they afraid of ritual defilement: a particular concern for the priest, for whom contact with a dead body would have prevented his performing his religious functions?  We don’t know for sure. We can probably relate to some of their fears and hesitations.  But to prevent this desperate situation from complicating their busy lives, they screen him out.

At long last, a stranger stops.  We are told that he was “moved with pity”.  He sees not a corpse, not a Gentile, not a Jew, not a source of defilement; he sees a fellow human being in terrible trouble.  His heart goes out to him. Perhaps he knows himself, from personal experience, what it is like to be despised, to be in danger, to be beaten down by the judgments and rejection of others.  So he acts. He binds his wounds, takes care of him, even pays the hospital bill. At first glance, the moral of the story seems clear: help others, even when that requires of you some trouble or risk.  It is a good story, with a good moral message: a call to altruism. 

But then, Jesus raises the ante, takes the story to another level.  He makes a hated Samaritan the hero of his story.  Relations between Jews and Samaritans were at best strained, at worst hostile and violent. As we saw in the Gospel just two weeks ago, Jesus and his disciples, when travelling from Galilee to Jerusalem, had to make a wide detour because Samaritans would not let them pass through their territory.  And yet, Jesus’ parable casts the Priest and Levite in a negative light, while a foreigner – a hated Samaritan – is praised for courageous, compassionate, self-sacrificing action to a neighbour in need. 

Jesus tells this story in response to a lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbour?”. If the Law instructs us to love God and love our neighbour, then it is totally legitimate to ask that question.  The problem with the lawyer is that he seems more concerned with limiting, rather than extending, the object of his love.  The question, "Who do I have to love?" becomes "who can I avoid loving, and still get away with it?" Jesus’ parable puts the moral focus squarely back on us: how are WE called to BECOME neighbours to those in need? 

In today’s “global village”, the question is no less pressing:  whom do we include in our circle of concern, and whom do we exclude?  Whose suffering arouses our sympathy, and whose do we ignore or diminish?  When disasters strike - Paris and Brussels, Baghdad and Istanbul, boats full of refugees sinking in the Mediterranean – our hearts are touched.  But once they disappear from our newspapers and TV screens, we move on.  Yet all around us, we meet neighbours who need our support: the Syrian refugee family, the victim of domestic abuse, the pregnant or suicidal teenager, the drug addict, the relative with a psychiatric disorder, the elderly patient being ever-so-subtly pressured into “assisted-death” – the list goes on.  Are these people my neighbours?  Are they people I can relate to, whose pain I can understand?  Or do they remain outsiders, on the margins, “foreigners”? 

In his parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus shatters the boundaries of exclusivity: he proclaims universal, all-embracing love. The Samaritan is no simple do-gooder: he is a courageous man who takes risks, who crosses social lines to rescue someone who is an enemy, someone who might well have left him to bleed to death by the roadside had the roles been reversed.  But this does not seem to faze him.  He responds not with rivalry, but empathy.    

We too are challenged by the words and example of Jesus to see and live differently: to build families, communities, and nations governed not by violence, but by compassion; not by exclusion, but by inclusion; not by self-centredness, but by love of neighbour.  “Go and do likewise,” says Jesus to the lawyer.  He doesn’t spell it out chapter and verse, situation by situation.  What “likewise” implies is left to us to figure out, in our unique situations.  But Jesus expands our moral imagination: he calls us to extend our sympathy beyond its usual limits, he invites us to acknowledge the undeserved mercy we have received from God and others, and share it.   

The events of the past weeks remind us that we live in a world that is so often divided, fragmented, and frankly, dangerous. But they also convince us of the necessity of becoming witnesses to the possibility of living together in unity and harmony.  The choice is ours. We can choose to be the priest or Levite, stuck on laws, the way things “always were,” clinging to past prejudices and hurts, or just not wanting to get involved. We can choose to be the victim waiting for others to take care of us. We can even choose to be one of the robbers, tearing others apart or using them to our advantage.  Or we can choose to be the Good Samaritan.

In a world where cynicism, indifference and violence are endemic, Jesus places before us today the Good Samaritan, the one who proved himself a true neighbour.  Jesus says to us: "Go and do likewise."  What neighbour is Jesus calling you, and me, to reach out to, to touch this week?  Let us ponder this question carefully.  And then – let us do it!!  Amen.