Sunday 10th Mass reflection by Fr. Didier Hadonou

Dear brothers and sisters, we all use to say “where does that concern me?”, “it is not my busyness”; “I don’t care”; today from the gospel that is proposed to us, it is a call to start changing our languages when things concern the wellbeing of our brothers and sisters. The story of the Samaritan is well known to us that is why we use to call an unknown person who does good to us “good Samaritan”. 

    

What makes this passage of Luke’s gospel so interesting, is the condition in which Jesus narrated it. It was the question of a lawyer who wanted to put Jesus to the test which supposed that it may be out of ignorance or knowingly. But being a lawyer, he was supposed to know all that concerns the Jewish law. That is what Moses is saying in the first reading proposed for our meditation today: “But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” We all know what to do to go to heaven and what Jesus is asking from us his disciples to have eternal live is just to love. To love is not just matter of feeling but is also having concern for each other. Unfortunately everything around us nowadays is showing that the world is centered only around our ego or our interest. Inasmuch as we have nothing gaining or any profit we hardly move or commit ourselves in helping those who are less privileged compare to us in any situation we may be. 

 

The priest and the Levite who passed without stopping by to help were just afraid of not being able to perform their religious duty. Blood in the Jewish culture is a sign of impurity and because of that they could not approach somebody who is bleeding. We too, we hide ourselves behind many fallacious reasons to refuse to help those who are in need around us. The first reason is that we too we don’t have enough to help but the story of the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephat is there to tell us more about the law of generosity: “for the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘the jar of flour shall not got empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the Lord sends rain upon the earth’”(Ikg17:14). In our common language, we used to say that “a generous giver never lacks”.

 

But we can equally put the story in different way. The priest and the Levite may represent an institution like the church and the person left “half dead” may be us sinners or some of our brothers and sisters who do not remain in one or another way faithful to the church. The tendency to behave towards them is to be like the priest and the Levite. We are afraid of what people will say about us and for this, we don’t want to approach them. Pope Francis in his exhortation the Gospel of Joy says that the church is like hospital and those we are afraid to approach because of their irregularity, have their place. They need our care and love so that we can alleviate the pain or suffering they are going through. By being close to them, we become the new Samaritans that our wounded brothers and sisters need today.

 

Under the face of the priest and the Levite, we can also see an institution like our states. For a state to achieve his strategy, attentions are not given as such to the poor. When the World Bank or the IMF intervenes in our African countries, those who suffer most are the poor part of the population. They are abandoned to themselves after having been sacked from their job meanwhile all the political leaders and their family still have facilities or possibilities to go overseas for their treatment if it happens that they have health problems. But I may say that the whole issue concerns also whom we call neighbor. In the 1990, a question was addressed to a French politician Jean-Marie Lepen about his phobia against the foreigners in France despite the fact that he is a fervent Christian. He quoted this passage of the gospel saying: “Jesus said we should love our neighbors not people from afar.”

 

In some of our ways of showing generosity, we too select who can be or those who are our neighbors according to their place of origin or statues in the society. At times we help only those who tomorrow can also help us when we will be in need; we help only people from our village or ethnic groups or go and buy from our country people who stay far from our home despite the fact that next door we have people selling the same we need etc…. 

May we become for each other nowadays, good Samaritans without borders that our world need.

 

 

FR. DIDIER HADONOU, SM