15th Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Luke 10:25-37
“What must I do?”
The homilist at this mornings
Mass gave me a lot to chew on. When
Catholics are asked about their favorite parable, Bishop Lynch stated, they
overwhelmingly claim the Good Samaritan.
In the pew I shook my head in
agreement.
But by the time he wrapped
things up I wasn’t so sure anymore…I think that was his strategy! Have I always liked it because I thought of
myself as the Good Samaritan and everyone else as excuse-making passers-by? Or at least if I’m not the Good
Samaritan, surely I'm trying to be!
How often do I try to
rationalize down God-Like-Mercy to fit into something…you know…workable? The thing that really struck home was the
challenge to reflect on how easily I narrow Mercy when the reason someone is in
such a mess is their own damn fault!
This relates to the victim in the story who, for Pete’s sake, travelled alone
on a road everyone knew was fraught with dangerous thieves and criminals! What
did he expect!
I was talking to a friend the
other day who makes follow up visits to chronically ill patients in an effort
to help patients comply with prescribed therapies and medicines. The goal is to keep the patients from having
to come to the ER with yet another acute episode caused by failure to
comply. It can be so frustrating! What more could be done?
I am wondering now if the act
of caring itself is mercy…period? The
other part of the story isn’t mine to know.
The GS just showed mercy. He
didn’t appear to be interested in how the traveller came to be in his
predicament. He didn’t have a need to
measure future decisions in an effort to assess the effectiveness of his
intervention.
What must I do?
Do mercy…just for the heck of
it.
Do it, and see what happens…to me!
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