Today Saint Luke recounts the familiar account of the parable of the Good Samaritan. He describes how a lawyer sought to test Jesus. Not content with knowing that the path to salvation involves loving both God and one’s neighbour, he pushed Jesus further, wanting to know exactly who his neighbour is. And it is in response to the question “Who is my neighbour?” that Jesus Christ tells this parable.
In order to understand Christ’s response in this parable, we need to appreciate the hostility that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Jews despised the Samaritans and the thought that a Samaritan could have been the neighbour that the Law referred to would have been unthinkable to an observant Jew.
In this parable we see how God breaks through our “normal” human ways of thinking. Jesus Christ tells us that our neighbour is not exclusively someone connected to us by the ties of blood, language or similar background. Rather, our neighbour is simply the person whom God has put on our path at any given moment.
It is in our response to those whom God puts on our path in our day to day life that we see our true response to God. Too often we like to be in control: we are happy to do the charitable works that suits us. But God can put people on our path whom we would not necessarily choose and the neighbour whom God chooses for us may be the last person whom we would choose to be associated with. And Jesus Christ teaches us that it is precisely in such encounters that we find the true path to salvation.