The Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter Ten, Meditations on Scriptures Twenty-Five to Thirty-Seven.
Monsignor Joji Vadakara, Vatican City
Today we read in the Gospel about Jesus telling a lawyer who came to test Christ with the question of what he must do to inherit eternal life, that works of love are the shortcut to the kingdom of heaven. The background of today’s gospel is the part where the seventy-two people whom Jesus had sent to the places they were going to return, share the good experiences they had, and Jesus rejoices in the Holy Spirit and praises the Father. Jesus only tells his disciples, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For, I say, many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, but did not see. They wanted to hear what you hear, but did not listen”. .It is not because of our ability or superiority, but because of God’s grace.
What must I do to inherit eternal life? This one question must have crossed our mind at least once in our life. There is not one of us who does not want to be known as a good person. It is a very good desire to want to live a life of good personality, to be loved by all and to be admired by all. Perhaps we can even consider it a holy wish if we wish. But this is the challenge that the gospel presents to us today. How can you be truly good for others? How can we sincerely give love to others? How can you value and consider others?
The answer to these questions is clearly stated in the Gospel through the words of the lawyer. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (v. 27). Whenever you and I begin to love God and people beyond our personal interests and our own needs beyond the requirements, compulsions, and laws, then we will become the heirs of the kingdom of heaven and the heirs of eternal life.
Through the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells the lawyer that the position of love and mercy is above even the legal system. The law of love is more important than the law of frameworks, traditions, and practices. Jesus clearly tells us about this law of love in verses twenty-seven to thirty-six of Luke’s own Gospel. Beginning with “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you”, and ending with “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”, Jesus is calling those who follow Christ to practice close love and mercy to God’s children, rising from proceeding only according to the world’s justice and law.
If the lawyer had a heart to love God and neighbor, he would not have doubted the words of Jesus. The words of Jesus do not cause stumbling to those who truly have goodness and love in their hearts.
The Gospel mentions the question of who is the neighbor as part of the justification character of the lawyer. Then Jesus tells him about a nation that the Jews were replacing. The gospel makes this clear to us through the words of a Samaritan woman in the ninth verse of the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. There is a question that the Samaritan woman asked Jesus standing at the well for water: “Why do you ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink when you are a Jew? There is no relationship between Jews and Samaritans” (Jn. 4,7). In the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, in the fifty-third verse, we read about the uneasy relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans. On his way to Jerusalem, when he entered a village of the Samaritans, the Evangelist Luke writes that “because he was going to Jerusalem, they did not receive him” (Luke 9:52). Thus, in today’s Gospel, Jesus shows the lawyer as a neighbor a man from a people who were hostile to the Jews, whom the Jews considered unfit for contact.
Beloved, there is no need to go into the description of the story of the man going from Jerusalem to Jericho, and the good Samaritan who was the neighbor of the man who was robbed and lying by the wayside. Because the story is clear to us. But we must never forget the message of this story. The Samaritan approaches this man lying by the wayside, where the priest and the Levite have passed away. In Judaism, the representatives of the religion, the persons who were supposed to be representatives of goodness, who were supposed to be good neighbors, passed away.
Today’s gospel is a message to every human being who is far away from the presence of every human being who is the son of God, the Lord of life. When you walk away from the people God loves, you walk away from the possibility of eternal life. If we read the words of Jesus about the final judgment in the last part of the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, from the thirty-first verse, in this situation, the essence of this story that Jesus tells will become clearer and more acceptable to us. In the fortieth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter, Jesus says: “I tell you the truth, as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me” (John 25:40).
As we go through today’s gospel, dear brothers and sisters, the gospel asks us a question: Are we living enough to inherit eternal life? Our answer to the question of whether we are living according to God’s law contains the answer to the question in the Gospel. Every Christian has a duty to live according to the law of love of Jesus who came as love. God is goodness and love. Christ is love who gave his life as a sacrifice on the cross for us sinners and weak. The law He gave us is the law of love. If the Christian is a follower of Christ, then every Christian must be an imitator of Christ. Jesus is the one who slaps the left cheek, the right cheek too, the one who forgives even the crucified, who loves without boundaries, Jesus is love.
Like the Good Samaritan, we can strive to be good neighbors to others. We can turn away from loving others for our own needs. Let us move away from doing good with the expectation of reward and for the sake of a good name in front of others, and with the sole intention of becoming valuable in the sight of God, let us strive to love others without discrimination and to be good neighbors to our merciful children of God. May God bless us all to become true disciples of Christ who have inherited eternal life and whose divine love flows into wounded people. Amen.