Holy Superabundance

(Readings for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37)

There is a natural inclination within each of us - a pull, an instinct, a stirring - to do good to others. It is a basic instinct that most people possess. We see this impulse in parents, teammates, soldiers, and community members. Selflessness is not difficult to find.

We often try to codify such behavior. In Deuteronomy, we read how Moses called the Hebrew people to form a nation that would live by a code of ethical behavior, following God's law and commands. This law is not a externally imposed burden, but is to be found written on our very hearts.

Jesus affirms this reality. Yet, in today's Gospel, Jesus also challenges us to deepen our commitment to the law of love. This call takes us beyond a basic practice of law, ethics, and morality. The call to love begins from our heart and takes us to the most unexpected of places.

Vincent Van Gogh - "The Good Samaritan" 

Jesus presents to us the Parable of the Good Samaritan through which we learn how God showers upon us a superabundance of mercy, love, and generosity. While we need to keep developing our impulse to do good for others, we are also summoned to go deeper, to be overly generous, merciful, and compassionate in a way that defies all rationality.

The real shock factor of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is that Jesus tells us to treat those who are truly "other" from us with a holy superabundance. Those who are completely different in all things - ideology, religion, race, culture, way of life - these are the ones to whom we are called to "go and do likewise." It is easy to love those who are similar to us or who share the same family, religion, or affiliations. But those who are utterly different...how do we treat them?

Jesus, through the Parable of the Good Samaritan, shows us the way. In a world filled with violence and strife, what if we loved with the superabundance God has shown us? What if we loved the immigrant, the refugee, the elderly and disabled, the unborn, the poor...and yes, even the terrorists, the drug-dealers, and violent reactionaries with this reason-defying law of God's superabundance? Perhaps then we would be led to an unexpected place: a place of encounter, and from there, a place of peace.