Day: August 29, 2021

“And who is my neighbour?”

There are five questions in today’s Gospel that shape our understanding of the familiar Parable of the (so‑called) Good Samaritan which illustrates the ethic of compassion. The questions belong to a deeper consideration of the radical meaning of this parable and its place in the ethical understanding that belongs not only to the interaction and connection between Judaism and Christianity but between the major religions and philosophies of the world. In other words, there is something profoundly universal communicated to us here through the idea of the law as grace and in the insistent point about the nature of our obligations towards one another in care and compassion.

Thus this Gospel highlights the idea that we are primarily and essentially social, spiritual, and intellectual beings whose lives are bound up with one another in an ethical community. In this sense, it counters the reigning ideology of our times which assumes the self-completeness of the radically autonomous individual and which leads inescapably to the technocratic mastery of anything human or non-human that would limit the negative freedom that such autonomy assumes.

The first four questions belong to the setting of the scene for the parable; the fifth belongs to its conclusion. Two of the questions are raised by “a certain lawyer;” the other three are the questions of Jesus. The whole passage assists us in the understanding of what Paul means by “walk[ing] in the Spirit” and as not being “under the law.” This is challenging since the parable illustrates precisely the meaning of the law as primary, as a given good. The point, I think, is that the law in so far as it speaks to the reality or the nature or the form of our humanity embodies our freedom and dignity and is not simply a constraint. Such is the ethical wisdom of the teachings of the sister religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and of the Hindu teaching about ‘dharma’, of the eightfold path in Buddhism, and of the concepts of ‘ren’ and ‘li’ in Confucianism, for instance, and in accord with the philosophical teachings of Plato and Aristotle as well, albeit in very different registers of meaning and approach. It has, in general terms, to do with a life lived in accord with reason, a reason that belongs to the order of the cosmos and the human community through which individuals find their fulfillment. That order is not simply a human construct but depends upon an abiding principle, something divine, which informs our humanity. Such is the concentrated wisdom in this Gospel.

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