Thinking Anew:MANY HAVE HAD the experience of encountering a homeless person on the street and not knowing what to do. There is a twinge of conscience: ignore the person and walk by or offer a little help?
Dr Eva Fogelman, a psychologist who lives in New York, understands. “I cannot walk more than a few blocks without confronting a homeless beggar, face to face. I am inconsistent in opening my purse for this or that dishevelled young man with a cup in his hand asking for money for a cup of coffee, particularly after working a 14-hour day. My numbness to the dire social conditions that have led to the degradation and humiliation of a homeless beggar is a defence against the helplessness I feel in making a real difference in society. Those of us who would like to think of ourselves as basically caring, good, charitable people are amazed at our numbness to the plight of very needy people. Some of us rationalise that poverty; homelessness, and crumbling families are the system’s fault for not providing adequate housing and jobs for all its citizens; others blame the victims for their plight; everyone feels helpless about a more comprehensive solution to these social ills.”
Dr Fogelman has reason to be troubled. “Looking at the faces of homeless men in particular, but also women and children triggers thoughts of my father.” Her Jewish father had miraculously escaped a Gestapo mass killing of Jews in 1942 in Ilya in Belarus. He lived rough for months depending on the kindness of strangers.
“No one dared give my father shelter since those caught harbouring a Jew earned a death sentence for themselves and their entire family. Nevertheless a local farmer sent his children out to the ditch my father dug in the woods, brought him food, took his lice-infested clothes to wash, and brought him ointment to remove the vermin from his head and body.”
Eva Fogelman’s experience quickens our understanding of tomorrow’s Gospel reading, the story of the Good Samaritan told by Jesus to a lawyer who wants to know what he should do to inherit eternal life. He tells Jesus that he knows what the Bible teaches; that he should love God and love his neighbour as himself and Jesus agrees. But the man is not satisfied and asks: “Who is my neighbour?”
The word neighbour in the Greek means someone who is near, and in the Hebrew it means someone that you have an association with. This limited meaning confines the obligation to fellow Jews thus excluding Samaritans, Romans, and other foreigners. So Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in which a man is attacked and injured to show that our responsibilities for those in trouble knows no boundaries of any kind.
In the parable the first person to pass by the injured man is a priest.
Jesus tells how he showed no compassion for the man by failing to help, passing on the other side of the road so as not to get involved. Love was not a word for him that required action on behalf of someone else. The next person to pass by is a Levite, and he does exactly the same thing; he passed by without showing any concern. The one person who responds positively is the Samaritan – an outsider – one of a people despised by the Jews at that time, and who has come to represent what is best in the human character like those who assisted Eva Fogelman’s father.
She said of them: “While they were flesh-and-blood human beings with strengths and faults, these rare men, women, and children saw people who were in trouble and responded, not to the things that made them different, but to the points of commonality. Their humanitarian response sprang from a core of firmly-held inner values, which included an acceptance of people who were different. And central to these beliefs was the conviction that what an individual did, or failed to do, mattered.” Tomorrow’s Gospel is challenging: our neighbour is everyone and especially anyone in need. Their side of the street is our side of the street whether we like it or not.
“We can do no great things, only small things with great love” – Mother Teresa.
– GL