Sunday the 13th of July 2025 - The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deuteronomy 30:10-14/ Ps 69(68)/ Colossians 1:15-20/ Luke 10:25-37

There are two questions at the heart of today’s scripture, ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ and ‘who is my neighbour?’. The answers to these questions form the basis of our faith and give us the pattern to follow in our lives. The quest for eternal life has somehow been lost in our society today as people are encouraged to seek all they need and want from this life. However much we gain in this life it is destined to be lost in the end and will count for nothing. We should be looking beyond this life into our true and everlasting destiny. It is there that are hearts should be and there that we should be storing up our treasure. It will be too late once we leave this life and come face to face with the reality of our existence. We need to develop a consciousness of who we are, how we relate to our creator God, and how we relate to God present to us in others. The answer to the two questions begins our preparation for our eternal life and must be taken seriously.

The scribe in the parable is an expert in the detail of the religious law he interpreted and followed. We can become too obsessed with the details of rules, regulations, practices, dress codes, and the like, leading us to miss the very reason those things exist. These rules and regulations are there to guide us along the right path, they are not there simply for their own purpose, blindly following rules and statutes for their own sake is meaningless. Rather we should look for and follow the purpose behind the rules and guidelines we have. All boil down to two things, love of God, and love of neighbour. In fact, it is all about love of God because by loving our neighbour it is in fact God present in them that we are loving. The scribe thought he knew all about loving God by following the many laws of his religion, but there is much more to loving God than simply following a set of rules. The message from Jesus is to love God with all we have and to express that love of God by loving our neighbour.

The meaning of neighbour would have had a limited scope for the scribe. He would firstly see fellow scribes and Pharisees as his neighbours, people of his own, those he knew and trusted, those who lived and thought the way he did. He would never consider foreigners or outcasts such as Samaritans as neighbours. Asking Jesus for clarification of who his neighbour was prompted Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. Describing a Samaritan as good to a scribe would have been an anathema to the legal minded man. To his mind there could be nothing good about a Samaritan. The scribe sought clarification from Jesus about who his neighbour was. The parable shows us that our neighbour can be anyone of any persuasion who needs help, and there are indeed many people in the world in need of help. It matters not from what race or background they come from, how they live their lives, what they believe or do not believe, all humanity is created by God in his image and likeness, and God is to be found in all his creation. It is not for us to pick and choose who we render assistance to, we cannot judge who is worthy or not of our time, talent, and treasure. God gives us his unconditional love, and we must pass that love on unconditionally to others. Our question should not be who is my neighbour, but am I a good neighbour to others?

In the first reading we are reminded that the Commandments given to us by God are not simply a set of written words to be followed blindly. They are a law of love written in our hearts so that the way we should respond to God and our neighbour is very close to us, it is in our being and on our lips, so that we live our lives according to that great rule that sums up all the Commandments to love God and love others. We obey the voice of God, the Word of God, written in the Commandments not as tedious rules but as a way of getting close to God. The law is God’s gift to us, it brings God very close to us, God is not some remote entity dishing out rules to repress us, God’s word has become flesh in the person of Jesus, who is the Word of God, made flesh, who lives in our hearts and on our lips. This is the theme of the second reading showing us that just as Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God, so our neighbours are the visible image of Jesus living amongst us in those in need. Jesus is the ultimate Good Samaritan, and he calls us to follow him by loving one another as he loves us because God dwells in each of his human creations.

As Christians we should permeate love, charity, and care for others. This is because we were the battered and beaten person lying beside the road when the nail pierced hands of Jesus reached out to us while we were unworthy of his love. Christ shows us how to be the divine Good Samaritan, reaching out to those who others might think of as unworthy of help, of no value, or infectious. We must recognise who our neighbour is, who is it that needs our help. Humanity is weakened when the unwelcome, uninvited, migrants, the unborn, the old and sick, the unemployed, in short anyone in need is ignored on the road on which we all must travel. When we love and care for anyone in need, we follow the example of Jesus, and we minister to God. If we ignore anyone who needs our help, we ignore God.

Let us today recognise who are neighbour is, who resides in them, and how we can stop and help them rather than passing by on the other side.

God Bless Brendan.