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Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it (Lk 10:23-24). With these words, Our Lord Jesus Christ emphasizes the hope in the Messiah which was at the heart of the Old Covenant. This Messianic desire is present in all of the writings of the Old Testament: we often encounter them in the books of Moses, in the Psalms, and in the Prophets. The Messiah was the one who would fulfill the new covenant, promised by God through the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah:
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (Jer 31,33-34)
According to this prophecy, the new covenant would have as its consequence that of bringing the faithful to a more intimate knowledge of God, to a closer relationship with Him, benefits which we now enjoy, inasmuch as Christ has redeemed us and has given us the grace of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, the new covenant shines “incomparable glory,” surpassing the glory of the old law. St. Paul, full of stupor before this truth, exclaims with joy in today’s epistle: “Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses’ face because of its brightness, fading as this was, will not the dispensation of the Spirit be attended with greater splendor?” (1 Cor 3:7-8). “The dispensation of the Spirit.” The new covenant is capable of bringing us to holiness and justice precisely because it has been given to us as a gift from the Holy Spirit. The salvific mystery of the passion, death, and resurrection of our Redeemer having been accomplished, we have received from Him the Holy Spirit, which allows the justice of God to work within us by his divine grace.
This justice fundamentally consists of the obedience to the twofold commandment of love, that is, love of God and love of neighbor, as Jesus affirms in today’s Gospel. But the doctor of the law who discusses this topic with Jesus asks the question: “who is my neighbor”? Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan, one of the most known and loved stories of the Gospels. A man traveling along the road gets beaten by robbers, who leave him half-dead. A priest of the old law and then a Levite (i.e., one who helps the priest in divine worship) see him fallen in the middle of the road, full of injuries and wounds, and despite all of these things, still pass on the other side of the road without coming to his aid. Then, a Samaritan passes by. Now, the Samaritans were considered by the Hebrews as foreigners and pagans, people whom the Hebrews did not expect any act of goodness. But it was precisely he—the foreigner—who bound up the man’s wounds. In the Latin text, the phrase used to describe the reaction of the Samaritan is misericordia motus est (that is, “he was moved with compassion”). It is the same phrase which is used to describe the merciful father when, from a distance, he sees his son returning in the parable of the prodigal son (cf. Lk 15:20). The love which urges the Samaritan, therefore, is a moving and profound love. His reaction towards that suffering man corresponds to that which he would have suffered if he had to undergo such injuries and wounds. Through his compassion, he unites himself to the suffering man in such a way that what happened to the suffering man would have happened to himself. In this way, he becomes a true “neighbor” to the suffering man, loving him as himself.
It is a great and heroic charity, that of the Good Samaritan, a truly divine charity. The Fathers of the Church saw Jesus himself in the figure of the Good Samaritan. St. Augustine informing us that the word “Samaritan” means “guardian”, exclaims: “Who is our guardian if not our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Since he has risen from the dead so as not to die again, he neither sleeps nor nods off while he guards Israel” (First Discourse on Ps 68). According to this great doctor of the Church, the man wounded by the robbers is Adam, who represents each one of us; the priest and the Levite represent the old law, which was not able to heal man’s wounds; the Samaritan, in the end, represents Christ, who did not despise us, but, on the contrary, placed us on His beast of burden, that is, he took us up in His flesh; he brought us to the inn, which is the Church; he entrusted us to the care of the innkeeper, that is, those sent by Him; and in order that we may be cured, he took out two denarii, which represent the two precepts of the law: love of God and love of neighbor (Discourse on Psalm 125). Christ, therefore, is the promised Messiah who offers us the example par excellence of love. “Even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn 13:34).
But Christ gives us even more than a perfect example to imitate: he gives us the capacity to put this love into practice. The Samaritan drew near to the man fallen and “he bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine” (Lk 10:34). We can see in the cure used by the Samaritan the unction of the Holy Spirit, called in the Psalms “oil of gladness” (Ps 45:8), which is communicated to us in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, and in the wine, the blood of our Lord poured out for us, truly present in the Eucharist which we receive. Through the sacraments of the new covenant, God offers us his love, which makes us able to transmit this love even to others.
Following this example of Christ, the saints of every century have left numerous examples of heroic charity towards their neighbor. St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe and Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta constitute maybe the two great examples in recent times. Having before us examples of such great magnanimity, we could become discouraged, thinking that we could never arrive at such a selfless love. But the challenge of the Lord in the today’s Gospel is not impossible. Christ calls us to a love of which we are capable. We must, therefore, consider more carefully this challenge and ask ourselves, “To whom should I be a neighbor in my life? Who needs my love?” Usually it is someone quite close to us: a spouse, a parent, a child, a friend, a brother, a superior. Understood in this way, the call to be a neighbor towards others becomes more doable; and trying to be neighbor towards the people most near to us, we can learn to love in even the most difficult situations, when we find ourselves called to love an enemy or a stranger. Let us pray that Our Lord give us the strength to be a neighbor towards others, and thus fulfill his command: “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37).