Go, And Do Thou Likewise
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most famous of our Lord’s parables, and we’ve all been familiar with it since childhood. It is a story told in response to a sly lawyer who tries to trap our Lord by asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Our Lord asks him “What is written in the law? What’s your interpretation of the law?” And the lawyer answers correctly, confirming that all the hundreds of Mosaic laws, all the moral commandments observed by the Jews, they all hang on two simple laws, that first and above all, we must “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind,” and secondly “ love thy neighbor as thyself.” Our Lord approves the man’s answer, confirming that this is all he needs to attain heaven. The lawyer, however, being a lawyer, now tries not to look foolish in front of the onlookers and pushes our Lord to take it a step further. “And who is my neighbor?” he asks. Our Lord then goes about telling the story of the Good Samaritan.
The Samaritans shared much of the Jewish history, but had developed separately to form their own religion. They had theological differences with the Jews over the interpretation of the Torah, the location of the holy sites, various ritual practices and the religious calendar. These distinctions had grown from mere quarrels into all-out hatred of each other. Jews and Samaritans were enemies. They would not even talk to each other. So when our Lord tells the lawyer about a Good Samaritan, the very idea must have been foreign and deeply repugnant to all his Jewish listeners.
The idea of loving our enemies is one of the differences, at least on paper, between Jewish and Christian moral practice. Jews do not recognize the moral precept to love their enemies. They have been brought up on the Old Testament values, of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They did not absorb our Lord’s parable that we must love our enemies and return charity for hatred and persecution. Granted, most Christians have a hard time with this most basic of laws also, and we must not fall into the trap of thinking “we’re better than they are.” But there is always an element of shame when we read the parable of the Good Samaritan, isn’t there? Don’t we realize all too well, that in fact, we’re not even as good as many of our non-Catholic neighbors when it comes down to forgiving them that trespass against us?
Let’s put it to the test. Imagine we’re driving through the streets of one of our inner cities. We’re nervous, looking around for signs of trouble, our windows are wound up and our doors locked. Suddenly we see, lying by the side of the road, a man covered in blood, obviously in great distress. Do we pull over next to him and tend to his wounds, driving him to the nearest hotel and paying for his night’s stay? Or do we just drive past, dismissing the man as just another drunken bum, a homeless drug addict who isn’t worth our time? Maybe we’re too afraid that we’ll be the next victim, or that we’ll miss our appointment, or that we’ll get blood on our fancy clothes? It would be so easy just to ignore him, to pretend we didn’t see him. And nobody would ever know. And so we drive on, looking the other way. Just like the priest and the levite who left the man to die and did nothing. It takes courage to be a good Samaritan, and not all of us have that courage.
Our Lord does not condemn the priest and the levite, and maybe he will forgive us our lack of charity also. But let’s remember his last haunting question to the lawyer—“Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” It was a rhetorical question, but the lawyer answered anyway: “He that shewed mercy on him.” “Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.” He turns to us today and says the same thing: “Go, and do thou likewise.”
Loving our enemies is not easy. It does not come naturally. But if only everyone would follow this law, we would end up with a world without enemies. God knows this and therefore encourages us to practice the greatest virtue of them all, charity. He could have given us only the one commandment to love God above all things—after all, if we did love God perfectly, we would love our neighbors as a necessary consequence of that love for God. After all, God died for each of our neighbors, he loves each of our neighbors. So how can we pretend to love God if we don’t love those whom he loves? He could have left out that second commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves, as being redundant, unnecessary. And yet he saw fit to include it. He makes a point of telling us to love our neighbours, and yes, our enemies, and why? Because he knows just how hard it is for us to do so. He underlines the importance of this commandment with his parable of the Good Samaritan. And he drives the message home to all who will listen, telling them, “Go, and do thou likewise!”
We cannot drive by those in need. We have a solemn duty as Christians to obey our Lord’s greatest commandments. There is no opting out.