YEAR B: HOMILY FOR MONDAY OF THE 27TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME (1)

YEAR B: HOMILY FOR MONDAY OF THE 27TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

HOMILY THEME: THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN….”The one who had mercy on him”

BY: Brother Lluís SERRA i Llançana

HOMILY:

kind of question we may have asked ourselves more than once, in our life: «Master, what shall I do to receive eternal life?» (Lk 10:25). He wanted to put Jesus to the test. The Master, though, wisely answers what is written in the Scriptures, that is, to love the Lord your God and your neighbour as yourself (cf. Lk 10:27). The key is to love. If we seek the eternal life, we know that «faith and hope will go away, but love will remain forever» (cf. 1Cor 13:13). Any life project, any spirituality, that have not love in its center furthers us away from the actual meaning of our existence. An often forgotten but important reference point, is to love oneself. Only from our personal identity can we love God and our neighbours.

The teacher of the Law goes still further when asking Jesus: «Who is my neighbor?» (Lk 10:29). And he gets his answer with a tale, a parable, a little story, far away from complicated theories, but with a clear message. The model of the loving person is a Samaritan, that is, someone who is a dropout, someone excluded from God’s people. When they saw the man beaten and half- dead, a priest and a Levite just ignored him and passed by. Those who apparently are closer to God (the priest and the Levite) are those who are farther away from their neighbour. The teacher of the Law avoids to say the word “Samaritan” to state who did behave as neighbor to the wounded man: «The one who had mercy on him» (Lk 10:37).

Jesus’s proposal is clear: «Go then and do the same». It is not a theoretical conclusion of the debate but an invitation to live the reality of love, which is not only a vaporous feeling but a behaviour that defeats socials denominations and stems from a person’s heart. St. John of the Cross reminds us «at the crepuscule of your life you will only be examined of love».

Brother Lluís SERRA i Llançana (Roma, Italy)

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