Please read the passage before the homily.
To give you a context for today’s reading, there are two things I will mention. The highway between Jerusalem and Jericho was notorious for having bandits that prowled the route robbing, wounding and killing travelers. Samaritans were known to have strewed the rooms of Temple in Jerusalem with bones to desecrate it once before the Jewish Passover, according to the historian Josephus. Samaritans were part-breed heretics considered by the Jewish people as “better dead than alive”, whom we would probably identify as terrorists.
A man, presumably Jewish, fell in with robbers who leave him half-dead. Two outstanding members of Jewish society see him and avoid him. Would a third prominent Jewish person next see him and pass him by? That would justify our way of dealing with problems and allow us to consider the victim as a non-neighbor.
No, the third is an outcast from society, one who also happens to be rich enough to own a horse or a mule. He reacts to the injured man with compassion, gives him first aid and pays for his health care. The Samaritan, the outcast, proves himself a neighbor to the injured man.
It is also true that the injured man showed himself a neighbor to the Samaritan. He could have rejected him and told him to go away. He did not, but accepted the help offered. One neighbor offered help and the other neighbor accepted the help.
Jesus did not mention this other aspect of being neighbor, but this other aspect is important for us. It takes humility and generosity to allow someone else to take care of us in our need. We are not always called to be good Samaritan s who give, but we are always called tb be good Samaritans whether we are called to give or to receive aid. God is always neighbor to us; we have to be to others.