15th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Reflection: Look out for others
By SISTER MARY McGLONE
How many of us have heard someone elderly say, “I don’t want to be a burden?”
That sentiment comes from a lifetime of believing we can and should pull our own weight. Many of us started this at the age of 2: “I CAN DO IT MYSELF!” Then, school taught us that sharing answers might be cheating and we learned to think that needing help makes us look weak.
Today’s readings invite us to reconsider that idea.
We begin with Moses, the great lawgiver. Let’s look carefully. Moses wasn’t talking about the 613 instructions we find in the first five books of our Scriptures. Rather, like Jesus would do 1,300 years later, he taught that the Law is designed to bind us to God and to one another.
Listen to Moses’ message. God’s law is not mysterious or highfalutin. It’s not impossible to follow. He says it’s already inside us, in our hearts and our mouths, adding, “You only have to carry it out.”
At the beginning of his speech, Moses says, turn to God “with all your heart and all your soul.” We have a sense of what he means by “all your heart.” What we often misinterpret is “all your soul.” In Hebrew, soul (nephesh) doesn’t refer to some mysterious “spiritual” part of us, rather, it means our whole life — everything we are and do. Everything!
St. Paul offers us a meditation on what this means as he talks about Christ’s life. He invites us to consider Christ Jesus as the clearest possible image of God. He calls Christ the “firstborn,” implying that everything that comes after Christ from the beginning of creation reflects the divine — and humans in a unique way because we can choose whether or not to grow as images of God.
Paul tells us that, “all things hold together” in Christ. That is, as the Gospel of John (17:21-23) tells us, the purpose of our life is to recognize that we are one with God and neighbor. As Moses said, this union is part of who we are; our goal is to realize that in both the sense of understanding it and in the sense of living it out.
This takes us to Jesus’ tale about the good Samaritan. This traveler saw a victim of violence and was moved. He knew what it was like to be disregarded by the elites — and the fellow on the side of the road obviously shared that situation with him. Neither of them were treated like genuine human beings. They were both what some call “redundant,” people considered unnecessary, not worth bothering about.
The Samaritan saw a man in whom he recognized a fellow human being. He didn’t just see him, he “had compassion.”
In Greek, compassion (splanchnizomai) describes an intense emotion. It’s a gut feeling of identification with another, literally to feel their need so deeply that you physically yearn for what the other needs. This compassion comprehends the unity of humanity, a reality deeper than any differences of nationality, gender, ethnicity, religious belief or anything else that separates one from another.
To the Samaritan, the victim was not a “burden,” but one like himself, related to him long before they ever saw each other. The Samaritan made the man’s need his own and gave all he could to remedy his situation.
The Samaritan fulfilled Moses’ commandment to find God’s law in his heart and to carry it out. He heeded God’s voice with his heart and soul; in the process, his soul became larger and the victim became his neighbor. The Samaritan gave God more room to act in and through him. His relationship with God deepened because he allowed God’s love to be poured out through his heart (Romans 5:5).
We listen and meditate on the Scriptures to know Christ and learn how to practice his mission today. In this Jubilee Year of learning to be pilgrims of hope, this parable hits us in the gut. When communications media bring the world into our homes and onto our phones, our sense of being neighbors has become global. Our neighbor is anyone we bother to see.
Our challenge is to relate to the suffering people in our world like neighbors, never considering them burdensome. To do that, we need to overcome our erroneous faith in individual independence.
The Trinity is a community. We reflect the divine image when we become ever more deeply related to one another, when we see each person as a part of ourselves and necessary to the well-being of God’s entire creation. We know this truth in our hearts; all we need to do is carry it out.
Reading 1
(Deuteronomy 30: 10-14)
Moses said to the people:
“If only you would heed the voice of the LORD, your God,
and keep his commandments and statutes
that are written in this book of the law,
when you return to the LORD, your God,
with all your heart and all your soul.
“For this command that I enjoin on you today
is not too mysterious and remote for you.
It is not up in the sky, that you should say,
‘Who will go up in the sky to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’
Nor is it across the sea, that you should say,
‘Who will cross the sea to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’
No, it is something very near to you,
already in your mouths and in your hearts;
you have only to carry it out.”
Responsorial Psalm
(Psalm 69: 14,17,30-31, 33-34, 36-37)
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
I pray to you, O LORD,
for the time of your favor, O God!
In your great kindness answer me
with your constant help.
Answer me, O LORD, for bounteous is your kindness:
in your great mercy turn toward me.
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
I am afflicted and in pain;
let your saving help, O God, protect me.
I will praise the name of God in song,
and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
“See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
For the LORD hears the poor,
and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.”
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
For God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah.
The descendants of his servants shall inherit it,
and those who love his name shall inhabit it.
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
Reading 2
(Colossians 11: 15-20)
Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;
all things were created through him and for him.
He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in all things he himself might be preeminent.
For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile all things for him,
making peace by the blood of his cross
through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.
Gospel
(Luke 10: 25-37)
There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said,
“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law?
How do you read it?”
He said in reply,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your being,
with all your strength,
and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself.”
He replied to him, “You have answered correctly;
do this and you will live.”
But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus,
“And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replied,
“A man fell victim to robbers
as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.
A priest happened to be going down that road,
but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
Likewise a Levite came to the place,
and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him
was moved with compassion at the sight.
He approached the victim,
poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them.
Then he lifted him up on his own animal,
took him to an inn, and cared for him.
The next day he took out two silver coins
and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction,
‘Take care of him.
If you spend more than what I have given you,
I shall repay you on my way back.’
Which of these three, in your opinion,
was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”
He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”