Do you like retreats? I don't. I hate them! I'm forced to go on one each year--it's probably the fact that I'm forced to go that irks me, but I'm always dragged, kicking and screaming to the 4 day experience where we have to sit and listen to someone who Someone Else thinks will be good for us!
I think the best retreat I ever made was a workshop, more than a retreat, on social justice, given by Brian Hehir--a priest, and later Monsignor from the state of New York, who ended up in Washington DC working for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Archbishop Strecker, of Kansas City, Kansas, where I was working at the time, had demanded that we all go to this 3 day workshop--in fact, he had said that anyone who didn't show up, would be immediately transferred, and we wouldn't like where we were sent! Some had complained, "But what if someone dies?" He replied, drolly, "Let them call the Methodists!" So, we knew he meant business. Every last one of us showed up.
Now I don't remember a lot about that workshop--nothing at all of the content, except for what Hehir did with the parable of the Good Samaritan. He said, "Men, we all envision this gospel--Luke wrote it in such a way that it's easy to visualize. We can almost see the muggers beating and kicking and choking the victim, and leaving him for dead after stripping and robbing him. Then, we watch: and after seeing the holy people pass that poor half-dead Jew by, we see a stranger, a foreigner who binds up his wounds and gets him care, and we say, 'Yea! Samaritan! We need more like you!' But, let's say that that scenario happened on a Sunday, OK? Now, what if on the day following, Monday, the Samaritan passes that same place, and sees another half-dead Jew along the side of the road, beaten and close to death, what will he do? Well, he seems like a good soul, so let's say he'll bind him up and get him care. Then, let's say, that on Tuesday, he is going down that same road, and lo and behold, there's another! And of Wednesday another, and on Thursday another. How long will it be before his sensibilities are dulled? Before his commitment wanes? Or, simply before his funds run out?" Then , he said, "Don't you think that eventually it will dawn on him that MAYBE what we need to do is straighten out this stretch of the road so that bandits can't hide? Or, maybe hire a guard? Or, maybe put in a light? Or, maybe jobs should be created for young thugs so they won't have to kill to eat! Doing this, he is caring for 365 Jews a year, by making sure that they won't be left half-dead, stripped and robbed in that spot. This is what we call "social justice." It is "love" written LARGE, in capital letters. We are called to love in small letters, as in today's Gospel reading of the Good Samaritan when situations present themselves, but we are also called to use our God-given intelligence to make a more whole world--to mend its brokenness, so that wholeness and holiness can grow."
I have NEVER FORGOTTEN that example or that definition of social justice. It has informed my living and my working as a priest for the past nearly 39 years.
What the Good Samaritan does in the Gospel is the result of good religion. Good religion makes nice people--kind people--people who care for half-dead Jews on their doorsteps, but who also care to make their society a healthier, more wholesome and holier place, so that tragedy is NOT the daily "normal."
Jesus, Himself, probably was thinking of both individual and societal response when he gave the parable to illustrate what He saw as the essence of Torah, as the kernel of what God's will for humanity is all about. He, too, championed good religion.
But, I ask you, how long can a moral life be sustained simply because it is "commanded?" There's a commandment that says, "Love your neighbor," so you try, but how hard? And how long? Where does the spiritual energy come from to open us to living the religious life?
The Book of Deuteronomy where our first reading comes from, is a series of "last words," or "last sermons" from Moses to the Israelites, whom he has lined up, in formation, ready to enter and claim the "Promised Land." This is the end of Moses' life--after a lifetime of wandering with this people, he is ready to die, and so he knows that he is giving his last words--his best, perhaps "holiest" wisdom to his people. He's had 40 years to think about that revelation on Mt. Sinai--when the mountain shook, and he heard the words he wrote in the book. Here, on the plains of Moab, there is no shaking mountain, no fire, no wind...but there is SOMETHING MORE--a wisdom born of struggle, and it is this that he wants to share--it's his own "last breath," that he is breathing onto his people as he addresses them.
And what he says is surprising...he tells them that the Torah is "not in Heaven"--don't expect Divine Revelation to come to you--it's already come! If you want to know what to do, read the book and study it. It isn't esoteric or far away--you don't need to travel at all, you only need to go INSIDE, for it's IN YOUR HEARTS. The elder Moses knows what the younger Moses couldn't know: he has learned, painfully, that the religious project has an "outward character," in that we SHOULD be nicer people, but at its heart, the religious project is really about the "inner path," the path inside--to encounter the God Who made you, and Who resides deep within. It is learning to listen to THAT Voice that is the essential part of being an authentic human being. If we are true to our truest self, we shall be a wonderful gift to the earth.
What Moses hopes for his people is that they will come to know the wonderfully caring God, a God Who is always there to the rescue, BY LEARNING TO GO INSIDE--in other words, to find their own loveableness, their own ability to come to other's rescue--for they are created in the Image of That God, and when they come to know themselves, and create a society that cares and rescues the fallen--they will come, also to a far deeper awareness of God-Himself--who "hides" His presence in the broken of the world, and at the same time, they will heal the brokenness of the world, the flaws that have been in it since its creation.
Both Moses and Jesus want us to see that "attaining eternal life" is all about discovering the preciousness of all that is--the neighbor, the dog, the drapes, the mountains and the sea! We are not truly "ALIVE" if we harbor "smallness" toward anyone but ourselves. And the wider we learn to extend our hearts and souls, the more "alive" we become--eternally alive. Today's Gospel is the story of the discovery of the value of "the Other," the one who is SO NOT ME--the one thought to be an enemy, even--but when push comes to shove, one realizes that one MUST do for him for his very "humanity" demands it! At that point, the Samaritan stood on the very threshold of the heart of God, Himself. This is what Jesus wanted us to know.
The second reading from St. Paul teaches that "Christ Jesus" (as a human being) was the "form of the invisible God," and was so brutally treated. Luke, who may well have been Paul's disciple, says of the half-dead Jew along the roadside, "Here, before you is another "form of the Invisible God," let's learn from experience. The Samaritan rises to the call of his heart--his truest self. His prejudice may have made him wish to pass by, but his "true self," said, "Help him!" The Crucifix is always before us, showing us what we do to each other when we fail to see "Infinity in the dust of a human being", the Good Samaritan parable shows us what kind of world we can make when we take the time to see it--to see that Infinity, that fingerprint of the Divine--in another. It is a kinder, richer world we make...let's pray for the grace of kindness, and the Grace to lift ourselves and all our world a little higher this week. Let us pray for eyes to see Infinity in the dust. And may God bless you all.+
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