Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time--Liturgical Cycle C

Reading I: Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37
Reading II: Colossians 1:15-20
Gospel: Luke 10:25-37
Texts of Lectionary Readings

Homily

The story of the Good Samaritan is pivotal in Luke’s presentation of Jesus. As we are invited to go along with Jesus, to become one of his disciples, to be sent out like the seventy-two in last Sunday’s gospel event, we now come to that part of the journey which is critical. Our allegiance to Jesus now begins to require our concern not only for those who love us (“for what good is that?”) but also for those who turn us off, especially those who are in need.

We read in Chapter 9 that while they were on their way, someone said to Jesus: “I will be your follower wherever you go.”

Jesus answered, “The foxes have dens and the birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

To another, Jesus said, “Come after me.”

The person replied, “Let me bury my father first.”

Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead; come with me and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”

Yet another said to him, “I will be your follower but first let me take leave of my people.”

Jesus answered him, “Whoever puts his hand to the plow but keeps looking back is unfit for the Kingdom of God.”

But what exactly does it mean to proclaim the Kingdom, to be worthy of the Kingdom? In Chapter 10, Luke begins to pivot this teaching of Jesus to address this phase of “what it means to be a follower,” what it means to call oneself a Christian.

The teaching begins with the question of the lawyer: “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus does not answer the lawyer’s question. Instead he tells a story, the story we all know by heart – the story of the good Samaritan – and tells it in such a way that he poses the question which should have been asked: “Who was neighbor to the man in need?” rather than “Who is my neighbor?” It places the burden of being neighborly to all who are in need rather than being of service only to someone who happens to fall within the definition of my understanding of who my neighbor is.

It has long been a precious understanding by our church tradition that we as church people (as followers of Jesus) respond to people in need no matter who they might be – even those who despise us or who do us harm.

We have but to look at our church members’ long and historic response to health care going all the way back to heroic people like Anthony of Padua, or Angela Merici. But we don’t have to go very far back in our history. We have but to look at our own Sisters of Nazareth, as reported in the Courier Journal on July 20, 1986.

AIDS MISSION IS JUST OLD ROLE IN NEW FORM FOR SISTERS OF CHARITY

Dozens of angry phone calls poured into Nazareth Nursing Home of Louisville after the news broke that the nursing home operated by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, had asked the state for permission to care for AIDS patients.

“Why don’t you stick to your religion?” one caller asked the home’s administrator.

“I think I am,” Sister Gwen McMahon relied. “I think this is what Jesus would have done.”

Anyone who knows the Sisters of Charity shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised at their decision to set out on such a risky mission – or at their reason for doing so.

The Sisters of Charity, one of the first two Catholic religious orders originating in America, have been taking risks since they were founded near Bardstown in 1812.

For 165 of those 174 years, they’ve been caring for the sick.

Sister Gwen said, “There’s a lot of fear and apprehension right now. We’re talking about a fatal disease that nobody knows much about.”

Sister Charles Adele, 78 years old and a resident of the nursing home, said that the fear of AIDS reminds her of the fear of polio when she worked in the iron lung ward of the sisters’ Little Rock, Ark. hospital during the epidemic in 1949. “It was the same thing,” she said, “People were scared to death.”

She said she intends to visit the AIDS patients. “People near to the end like to talk and like to have somebody’s hand on their arm,” so “they know somebody’s there.”

“I think that’s what AIDS victims fear – that they’ll be left alone.”

From today’s scripture:

“Which of the three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the man who fell in with the robbers?”

The lawyer answered, “The one who treated him with compassion.” Jesus said to him, “Then go and do the same.”

That’s what it means to be a disciple, to call yourself a Christian. And that’s what it means to proclaim the Kingdom.

--Fr. Pat

Excerpt from "A Catholic's Companion: Liturgical Cycle C" (c)2000 C. Patrick Creed
Published by Watchmaker Press. Maggie Hettinger, editor