Who is my neighbor?

That clever lawyer in today’s Gospel reading asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. When Jesus answered him that the way was to love God and neighbor, the lawyer intellectualized and asked: “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus then answered him with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which was addressed not only to that lawyer, but is now addressed to each and everyone of us. Moreover, what is important is not so much our logic or intelligence, but our hearts. Our love. Not only for our family, but our love and compassion for anyone and everyone, including those who do not belong to our race, culture, religion, and social status. In fact, including those who hate or persecute us.

In the parable, both the priest and the Levite ignored the beaten-up victim of robbers as they passed by. In various ways, we may at times be doing the same, through rationalization, or religious prejudice, or social injustice. The one and only response of Jesus, both in his life and through the parable, is love-in-action, which involves self-sacrifice, persecution, all the way to death.

Let us first single out several real situations of rationalization, religious prejudice, and social injustice. A family was on their way to Sunday Mass when their vehicle passed by an accident, where an elderly woman was lying on the side of the road with some people trying to help her out, but no sign of an ambulance. The teenage daughter, sitting beside her father who was driving their wagon shouted, “Dad, stop. Let us try to help!” The mother and son sitting behind agreed to do the same. But the father said: “We will miss our Sunday Mass, and that is more important. Others will help them,” and he continued on. Indeed, the letter of the law is more important than the spirit of the law. This is not Jesus’ way.

In another family, a mother keeps reminding her 16-year-old daughter, who has a close friend, a Muslim girl in the same class: “Don’t be close to her. Remember, you are a Catholic. She might in time convince you to be a Muslim.” “But Mama,” the daughter insisted, “we are already the best of friends, and she is a very kind and loving person.” “Our religion is the one, true religion. Don’t forget that!” the mother retorted.

Another instance, this time of social injustice, is this housemaid, whose son just graduated from high school and is very eager to enroll for a college degree. His mother appealed to her employer for a sizeable sum of money for the whole semester, either as a scholarship from the employer-couple or as a debt that she would pay in installment for several years. They did not give in to her request. But three days later, this employer-couple went on a one-week pilgrimage to the Holy Land!

Let us now go to the opposite side, for there are living examples indeed of the Good Samaritan among us. Again, a housemaid. This one, in her late thirties, suffered a serious stroke and was rushed to a public hospital. But there were very inadequate medical facilities and instruments needed for her condition. Most patients with a similar condition in that public hospital were just given the best that the hospital had and could afford, and allowed the patients to slowly pass away. The employer-couple, moved with compassion, immediately transferred their dying housemaid to a well-known private hospital and gave her all the needed medical procedures and facilities with the determination to save her life. It worked! She was saved, but it cost the employer-couple more than a million pesos. All this was given to the housemaid, gratis et amore. The housemaid, her husband and two children, were deeply grateful to the employer-couple, who were at peace with God and themselves for what they did. They then cancelled their planned trip abroad, for the hospital bills affected their finances considerably. But the price of being the Good Samaritan is worth it.

Going now to another situation, here is a couple who is running a small business with 20 employees, who all have families of their own. The employer-couple are faithfully following the legal minimum wage law plus allowances. But they both feel and observe that their employees and their families are not able to live decent lives that can be described as really human. They keep referring to our Constitution, Article XV entitled The Family, which states that the “State shall defend the right of the family to a family living wage and income.” They are convinced that this is not happening. They came up, through a lot of praying and discernment, with this conclusion: Either to enlarge their company, which will use all their savings and financial investments; or keep the company small as it is, but increase the wages and salaries of their employees in a big way, plus much bigger allowances to really improve the quality of their family lives.

They came up with the second option, and it gave them deep, inner peace. They will lose a lot of their own money, but they will be sharing it with 20 other families, who will be able to live decent lives according to God’s ways. The Good Samaritan is more than just a parable. It is God’s mission for each and everyone of us today, especially those among the lower middle-class, the upper middle-class, and the rich.