The first reading for mass today is really awesome. In fact all of the readings for Sunday’s mass are awesome. If you have been a Christian for a while, then the story of the good Samaritan in the gospel today is very familiar to you. The way the readings fit together for today’s mass though, can shed a new light on the readings. They do not change the meaning of the readings, or the bigger picture of their history in the bible, but simply give a new perspective by the way they are combined together.
The first reading today is about our need to love God first and above everyone else in our lives. Our relationship will God is down to earth and not too complicated to understand, if we simply listen to our heart.
The gospel today is about loving our neighbor in the story of the good Samaritan. The gospel also explains the two great commandments, to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The first reading is about loving God first and the gospel is about loving our neighbor. Pretty neat huh?
Another small thing about the readings for mass this Sunday is the second reading. The second reading from the book of Colossians is all about Jesus. The second reading lies in between the old testament reading and the gospel. All of the old testament stories described in the bible led up to the time of Christ and all of the new testament readings flow from him. The life of Jesus is at the very center of the bible.
In the gospel today, a scholar of the law asked Jesus “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” What is really awesome about this is the Lord’s response. He didn’t answer him. Instead of answering him, Jesus asked the scholar, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He wanted to hear what the man had to say. This is just totally awesome because the Lord didn’t ask him what he had been taught, but “how do you read it?” The bible contains living words. Words of truth and life. These words can be interpreted differently by each person who reads them though. Even though the scholar knew the correct answer because of his education, he still didn’t quite get the meaning of it. It sounds like he wanted to twist the meaning of the scriptures to suit his own needs, but Jesus turned it around on him, when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. It wasn’t a person’s position in life that made them a good person in the Lord’s eyes. Thinking of one’s self did not make a person holy. Caring about other people and being of service to them in their time of need, is what makes a person holy.
The Good Samaritan gave his time, money and effort to a fellow human being who was unable to take care of himself. Can we think of a single time in our own life that we went out of the way, to give our own time, money and effort to (significantly) help someone other than ourselves? Did we expect to be repaid or acknowledged for our efforts?
Most of us are educated about love through the study of the bible and what our Catholic faith teaches, but Jesus tells us today that knowledge of the scriptures are not enough. We are to “go and do likewise”. The words without concrete action is just empty words. Today, let us live the words we read about in the bible with our daily actions. It isn’t just other people that notice when we fail to live what we say we believe. The Lord Jesus sees this as well. But, we shouldn’t live out this parable in our lives out of fear for the consequences if we fail to do so. Just think of the joy, the gratitude and the love that the injured man felt when he woke up and met the man who helped him? This act of kindness will never be forgotten as long as he lives and the good Samaritan probably made a friend through this act of kindness. Friends are worth more than all the money the entire world and strangers are just friends that we haven’t met yet.
