Good Samaritans

A professor at one of the more famous American universities was traveling in Italy on board a train bound for Venice. In the first class compartment, he found himself alone with a young man, a hippie: he had long hair and wore an earring and denim trousers, and all the rest. In their conversation the professor discovered that the young man was a Filipino. Although a hippie, the young man apparently had money as he was traveling first class.

While they were conversing the professor had a heart attack and became unconscious. He woke up several hours later in a hospital room.

The young Filipino had pulled the emergency cord and the train personnel came running. They stopped the train at the nearest town. The young Filipino hippie summoned an ambulance and went with the patient to the hospital, paid for the ambulance and the initial fees of the hospital, and then went on his journey.

The professor never saw him again.

The professor (who had recovered from his illness) told me later, "That young Filipino hippie saved my life."

Ten years ago as previously mentioned in this column a young Filipino Jesuit scholastic from Quezon City, Richard Michael Fernando, died in Cambodia. In the refugee camp, one of the men got angry at something or other, got hold of a hand grenade and was about to throw it into a room where there were many persons. Brother Ritchie Fernando rushed to him and embraced him, imprisoning his arms. The grenade dropped to the ground and exploded, killing Ritchie Fernando at once.

The would-be murderer was saved, and so were all the people in the classroom who would all have been killed or injured had the grenade been thrown at them.

When one of the scribes asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus did not answer with a definition. Instead he told a story, the immortal story of the Good Samaritan. That story ends with the injunction, "Go and do likewise." Many have heeded that advice. There are many Good Samaritans even today.