Being A Samaritan

Bible Readings:

Galatians 1:6-12; Luke 10:25-37

Recently I heard a condemnation of the poor starving people of India: “Why don’t they get out and make more, like I did?” The speaker made his money out of oil. He did not put it there; it just splashed up his face. But the poor of India could dig until the end of time and not hit oil. The secret of helping the needy is to treat them as they are, not as they ought to be, nor as we want them to be, but as they actually are. The Good Samaritan did not ask, “Why did this man come this way so dangerous with thieves? Why could not the Jews who passed by help another Jew? Why should they leave it .to a Samaritan to help?” He simply accepted the fact that there was a needy human being and went down to minister (Lk 10:34). Do we want to love others as the Samaritan did? Then, it is not enough to have merely an intellectual understanding of another’s difficulty; we need to go a little further to feel it as our own burden. Loving others calls for patience, tolerance and benevolence. It extends to those beyond our own sect, and is exercised not only to the good but even to the dull and the foolish that stumble. But to be patient and benevolent with them requires that kind of love, which sees in every human person God’s own image.