Who Is My Neighbor?

An expert in the Law asked Jesus:

“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus asked him what was written in the Law and how he understood it.

The man answered:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus answered:

“You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

But the man, wanting to justify himself, asked:

“And who is my neighbor?”

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A man fallen on the road

Then Jesus told the story of a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers.

They took everything he had, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.

A priest happened to be going down that road. He saw the man and passed by on the other side.

Then a Levite came. He also saw him and passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan came to where the man was.

He saw him and had compassion.

He went to him, bandaged his wounds, put him on his own animal, took him to an inn and took care of him.

The next day, he left money with the innkeeper and asked him to keep taking care of that man.

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Jesus' question

Then Jesus asked a question.

And it is important to pay attention to exactly what he asked.

He did not ask:

“Which of them helped his neighbor?”

He asked:

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

The expert answered:

“The one who had mercy on him.”

The neighbor, in Jesus' question, is not the man who received the help.
It is the one who had mercy on him.

This changes the place from which we can hear the parable.

Perhaps, before putting ourselves in the Samaritan's place and asking whom we should help, we can recognize that we too are the man fallen on the road.

In need.

Someone came near to us.
Someone had mercy on us.

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He loved us first

Jesus said that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

And God so loved the world that he gave his Son.

Before we do anything, then, there is a gift.

God loves and gives.
We receive.

That is why it is written:

“We love because he first loved us.”

And also:

“Give thanks in all circumstances.”

Perhaps gratitude is born precisely when we realize that what we have did not begin in us.

We received.

And it is God's goodness that leads us to repentance, to a change of mind, to a new way of seeing.

We begin to notice the hand of God reaching us.

Sometimes, through the hands of someone who came near.

Someone who cared.
Someone who forgave.
Someone who shared.
Someone who stayed when we were fallen.

Perhaps one of man's great difficulties is precisely this:
receiving mercy without recognizing where it came from.

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To know

Jesus said that eternal life is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he sent.

To know the Father.

A heavenly Father who is good.

To know Jesus Christ, whom he sent.

Paul says that God has already blessed us, in Christ, with every spiritual blessing.

And that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

And this same Paul can say:

“Christ lives in me.”

And suffer birth pains for the brothers and sisters:

“until Christ is formed in you.”

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Mercy received

Perhaps, then, the path is simpler than we imagine:

He loves.
He gives.
I receive.
I recognize his goodness.
I give thanks.
I am transformed.
Christ is being formed in me.
And I love.

Because the whole Law is fulfilled in a single word:

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We do not love to convince God to love us.
We do not practice mercy to buy eternal life.

We love because he first loved us.

When we begin to see the goodness of the one who came near to us, something begins to change within us.

The mercy received begins to find a way through.

The goodness received begins to become goodness in action.

And only then, perhaps, can we hear, with other ears, Jesus' last words to the expert in the Law:

“Go and do likewise.”