Did it work for you?
Year C
Fifteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time
Theme
To love God is to love other people as yourself
Points to note
This is one parable that
had worked its way so much into the English language. People refer to the Good Samaritan without
knowing who Samaritans are, and often with hazy recollections of the
story. For those familiar with it, it is
a parable so rich in lessons for us, and able to sustain us with much spiritual
sustenance. And yet, the basic lesson of
the reading is one and simple. It lies
in the last line, ‘go and do the same yourself’. I am reminded of the story of the priest who
was always using the parable in all his homilies. When asked if he could give a homily on
something else, he would reply, “Why? What have you done about that one?”
A common feature when
planning a session for such a rich passage is attempting to say too much at one
go. Too often, however, such
‘carpet-bombing’ techniques leave the session poorly focused. I find it more helpful to concentrate on just
one theme and treat it thoroughly. There
are other readings in future weeks, or at worse, further themes could be dealt
with in the next cycle.
By the way, Samaritans
descended from a small remnant of Jews who were left behind when the Jews were
deported to Babylon. They stayed behind
in Palestine and mixed with the local people because there were very few of
them. When the Jews returned from
Babylon, they considered the Samaritans impure because they mixed with the
local people. To this day, there are
still Samaritans in Israel, who are not considered to be Jews, who held their own Temple sacrifice on Mount Gerizim.
Liturgy
Acclamation before the
Gospel
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Your words are spirit,
Lord, and they are life:
you have the message of
eternal life.
Alleluia!
Gospel
Explain
that Jesus was himself on the way to Jerusalem when he told this story. Now, for the Jews of Jesus’ time, to go from
Nazareth to Jerusalem would mean having to pass through the country of a people
they didn’t like, the country of Samaria.
The Jews hated the Samaritans.
So, every time someone mentions Samaritans in the story, the Jews expect
them to be the baddies. The children may
be able to give contemporary examples themselves. This story, though, is different.
The Lord be with you.
All: And with your spirit.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St
Luke
All: Glory
to you O Lord
(Lk 10: 25-37)
There was a lawyer who
wanted to question Jesus, stood up and asked him, “Master, what must I do to
achieve heavenly life?” He said to him,
“What is in the scriptures? What do you
read there?” He replied, “You must love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
strength, and with all your mind, and you must love your neighbour as
yourself.” “You have answered right,”
said Jesus, “do this and you will get to heaven.”
But the man was anxious
and asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
Jesus told this story, “A man was once on his way from Jerusalem to
Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers; they took all he had, beat him and ran
off, leaving him half dead. Now a priest
happening to be travelling down the same road, but when he saw the man, he
passed by on the other side. In the same
way a deacon who came that way saw him, and passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan traveller who came next was
moved with compassion when he saw him.
He went and bandaged his wounds, applied medicine on them. He then lifted him on to his own horse,
carried him to the inn and looked after him.
Next day, he took out some money and handed them to the innkeeper, ‘Look
after him,’ he said, ‘and on the way back I will pay everything that is
owed.’ Which of the three, do you think,
acted as a neighbour to the man who fell into hands of the robbers?” “The one who took pity on him,” he
replied. Jesus said to him, “Go, and do
the same yourself.”
This is the Gospel of the
Lord
Dialogue
Do you like yourself? If you are someone else, would you like to
help yourself? What would you do?
There
are lots of wonderful things that everybody would like done for themselves. So, we needn’t take it that every child who
gives us a long list is being self-centred.
But try and steer the discussion away from being an overlong wish-list.
But you are not
yourself. All those things that you have
mentioned, would you do it for others?
Let’s look at the story
that Jesus told. What would the man who
was lying half-dead on the ground wish the priest and deacon to do? Did they do what he wanted them to do?
Here,
it is important to stress that priests and deacons nowadays do not behave like
that anymore. Has anyone ever met a
priest or deacon, who have refused to help, anyway?
What would God have like
them to do? By not doing so, did they
prove themselves to be God’s friends?
Next, who turned up? (Yes, the one who everybody thought to be the
baddie) What did the man on the
ground think of the Samaritan helping
him, him being a Jew? Did the Samaritan do what everyone expected
him to do, ignoring the half-dead man?
It
will be interesting to discuss how the Jew would have repaid the kindness of
his hated enemy. If the children are old
enough, try placing it in their everyday experience, when someone they expected
to have done something nasty to them actually turned out to be very kind.
So, Jesus asked at the
end: Which of the three, do you think, acted as a neighbour to the man who fell
into hands of the robbers? Which of the
three did what God wanted them to do?
Which of the three turned out to be God’s friend?
What about the other
two? Do you think they considered
themselves to be God’s friend? Do you
think God would have considered them to be friends on the basis of what they
did? Which is more important --- to say
that we are God’s friend or to do something that will show that we are God’s
friend?
Stress that action speaks louder than
words. If we say that we love God, we
must prove it by loving other people. St
John tells us that ‘Anyone who says, ”I love God’, and hates his brother, is a
liar!’ (1Jn 4:20)
It
will also be interesting if we discuss why the priest and the deacon did not do
what God wanted them to do. They were
more concerned with their own ritual cleanliness, but in the end, lost the
basis on which they were to be ritually clean.
A parallel will be when children kick up a fuss over the best clothes to
wear for mass and, in the process, ended up late and getting everybody upset.
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