Questions for reflection

As you slowly read this Gospel passage, allow its words to soak into your mind. You may want to light a candle to help you ponder the passage, reflect on the image above or on the words of Pope Leo below. You might want to imagine how it feels as Jesus tells you who your neighbour is in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

1. What is this passage saying to you?

2. What word(s), sentence or phrase in this Gospel passage most caught your attention; most touched your heart; most challenged you; most comforted you? Is there anything in this passage that you found uncomfortable or startling?

3. ‘And who is my neighbour?’. Who do I regard as your neighbours? Who do you exclude from your company? Are you truly a neighbour to those in need? Do you respond to them with kindness and compassion?

4. ‘Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.’ Have you ever been caught up in your own preoccupations that you have failed to notice someone in need of help?

5. ‘But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.’ Who do you stereotype and are surprised by the compassion they show others?‘ Who has been a good Samaritan to you, showing you compassion and coming to your aid?

6. ‘The one who showed him mercy.’’ Who has show you mercy? Who can you show mercy to in the week ahead?

Pope Leo tells us:

Compassion is expressed through practical gestures. The Evangelist Luke ponders the actions of the Samaritan, whom we call “good,” but in the text he is simply a person: a Samaritan approaches, because if you want to help someone, you cannot think of keeping your distance, you have to get involved, get dirty, perhaps be contaminated; he binds the wounds after cleaning them with oil and wine; he loads him onto his horse, taking on the burden, because one who truly helps if one is willing to feel the weight of the other’s pain; he takes him to an inn where he spends money, “two silver coins,” more or less two days of work; and he undertakes to return and eventually pay more, because the other is not a package to deliver, but someone to care for.

Dear brothers and sisters, when will we too be capable of interrupting our journey and having compassion? When we understand that the wounded man in the street represents each one of us. And then the memory of all the times that Jesus stopped to take care of us will make us more capable of compassion.

Let us pray, then, that we can grow in humanity, so that our relationships may be truer and richer in compassion. Let us ask the Heart of Jesus for the grace increasingly to have the same feelings as him.