15th
Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
July 14, 2013 4:00
and 5:30pm, 9:30 and 11:00am
Saint
Margaret Parish, Bel Air
Hurrying and Helping
About
five years ago, Princeton University did a study on what they called “Good
Samaritan” responses.
The
University divided some students into three groups. Each group was told to report to another
building across the campus to take a test.
The
first group was told to get there immediately and they were called the “high
hurry” group. The second group was told
to get there in fifteen minutes and they were called the “middle hurry” group.
And the
third group was told to get there sometime that morning and they were called
the “no hurry” group. Without knowing
it, the students had been set up.
Along
the way, various individuals posed as persons in need. One was crying, another pretended to be sick,
and another had a flat tire.
Interestingly,
none of the students from the “high hurry” or “middle hurry” groups stopped to
help anyone. But every student from the
“no hurry” group did stop.
This was
one indicator that led the Princeton study to conclude that as the hurry in our
lives increases, our caring decreases. This
finding strikes me as pretty accurate.
The Good Samaritan
That
study gives us a helpful angle for looking at today’s gospel.
The
gospel says that someone asks Jesus, “What
do I have to do to inherit eternal life?”
Maybe this person is really asking: “What
do I have to do and what don’t I have to do?”
Jesus
ends up telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. As I look at the parable, I have to imagine
that there are three levels of response to the man lying by the side of the
road: 1) seeing, 2) feeling, and 3) acting.
Seeing, Feeling, and Acting
All
three people who are walking on this road see the injured man lying there. The first two, the priest and the Levite,
just keep walking.
They
know that if they get near this man or touch him, the religious law makes them
ritually unclean. And if that happens, they
will have to jump through some time-consuming hoops to become ritually clean
again.
So the
first two people see the man but don’t slow down to really see what has
happened or to help. Then the third man
comes along, a Samaritan, and he sees the injured man and then he slows down
and stops.
The
Samaritan sees to the point that he feels compassion for the beaten man. And with his compassion, he then acts and
does what he can to help.
So, to
go back to the Princeton study, it seems that we have to slow down enough to
see, to really see the person who is in front of us. For us, it could be a homeless person at a
traffic light, carrying a cardboard sign asking for help.
Or it
could be a son or daughter who is upset about a relationship that has fallen
apart but is trying to hide it. We have
to be slow enough to really see who is before us.
And
then, if we allow ourselves to do that, we will probably feel compassion for
the person or persons who are hurting.
And once again, if we are slow enough, the feeling of compassion will
move us to act – to do what I humanly can to help.
So,
seeing leads to feeling and feeling leads to acting. But the linchpin in all of this is that we
are willing to slow it down, to live slowly enough at least within ourselves 1)
to really see and then 2) to really feel the other person’s plight and then 3) to
take time to help.
Conclusion
Jesus tells this story and teaches this lesson in answer
to the question: “What do I have to do to
inherit eternal life?”
His lesson is that we are to be neighbor to one another
and apparently it is in our being neighbor that little by little we become
God-like. And it is in becoming
God-like, Jesus-like that we can move peacefully into eternal life.
