"Fratelli tutti": Chapter Two

When asked to write this article, I had just been diagnosed with COVID-19 and was quarantined to my room in the rectory. Having read Fratelli tutti a few days before this time of isolation provided me with an opportunity to pray with it deeply. In prayer a true story I read kept coming into my heart.

Eight convicts were in a holding cell and noticed the armed guard outside their cell was slumped in his chair and lost consciousness. They called for the guards, shouted for help, and finally forced open the cell door. Still shackled, they found the guard had no pulse, and they began shouting and banging on the walls. Finally, some deputies heard the commotion and came running.

Those prisoners could easily have stayed behind bars. The deputies, who had no idea why the prisoners had broken out of their cell, or why the guard was unconscious, might have shot first and asked questions later. Thank God they didn’t. The prisoners went quietly back to their cell, and deputies started CPR; paramedics arrived, used a defibrillator, and saved the guard’s life. When asked why they went out on a limb for a guard, one of the prisoners, a meth addict, said, “That’s a good man. He saves lives.”

The phrase “good Samaritan” has become just a part of our everyday language. Anyone who helps a stranger, like those prisoners helping the guard, is a “good Samaritan.” We even have “good Samaritan laws” to protect people who take a chance helping strangers.  

Sometimes Bible stories we’ve heard all our lives become common place … and we don’t see them any longer in true light, because they are no longer surprising to us.

Take that phrase “good Samaritan.” Who were the Samaritans? You might remember Samaritan villagers wouldn’t welcome Jesus because he was on his way to Jerusalem, and James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven on them. In John’s Gospel, the Samaritan woman at the well is amazed when Jesus asks her for a drink, because as John tells us, Jews and Samaritans have nothing to do with one another.

Samaritans to the Jews were heretics, half-heathens — literally half-foreign offspring of Jews intermarrying with foreign colonists. The bottom line is to Jews the idea of a “good Samaritan” was almost a paradox.
In this true story about the prisoners, a couple of Scripture passages come to mind.

When the meth addict said the guard was a good man, I can’t help but think who was good at that moment. I remember Jesus saying … as he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone (Matthew10:17-18).

Could this meth addict have seen Jesus in this good man and was reaching out like the good thief who was on the cross with Jesus? Did this meth addict, being moved by the Holy Spirit, take one step closer to sainthood by helping his fellow man no matter the cost? With this so-called act of random kindness, did this addict turn his life around?
Sometimes we look at things and say that’s what he was supposed to do. We should help our brothers and sisters … it’s the human thing to do. But how many inhuman things do we do and no one steps up? … abortion … euthanasia … assisted suicide … etc. Being good is not easy.

Jesus says in John (13:34-35), “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Let’s not ever forget this.

I know a lot of you reading this article will not remember this because our times are so different. When I was growing up, in many communities it was common to see signs in store front windows saying … white people only or businesses needing help … woman need not apply and today although not advertised I hear … no Mexican better come for a job. How things have changed! Or have they?

Imagine if Jesus were preaching in America today? Who would the parable be about? Maybe the good undocumented Hispanic … or the good Muslim refugee. In some college classrooms, believe it or not, you’re considered a terrible person if you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, so it may be a parable of the good Christian! Who would it be for us? For you? For me?

The story of salvation is the story of union, reconciliation, coming together. First God unites humanity to divinity by taking on our human nature in the Incarnation, becoming a man in Jesus Christ our Lord.

The word “catholic” means universal. Jesus is the universal savior, the savior of all mankind, Jew and Gentile, man and woman, black and white, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Indian, rich and poor, old and young, slave and free.

Pope Francis, in his encyclical, warns us that being religious doesn’t automatically translate into love of neighbor:
“It is not automatic! You may know the whole Bible, you may know all the liturgical rubrics, you may know all theology, but from this knowledge love is not automatic … The priest and the Levite see but ignore; they look but they do not offer to help. Yet there is no true worship if it is not translated into service to neighbor … before the suffering of so many people exhausted by hunger, violence and injustice, we cannot remain spectators. What does it mean to ignore the suffering of man? It means to ignore God! If I do not draw close to that man, that woman, that child, that elderly man or woman who are suffering, I do not draw close to God.”

Who is my neighbor? Who do I have to love? Jesus’ answer here is the most radical moral teaching in history. Remember, Jews and Samaritans were enemies. Jesus taught that we cannot love our neighbor and hate our enemy; we must love even our enemies.

This is such a hard teaching we have taken the sting out of it by spiritualizing the word “love,” so it doesn’t make any demands on us. Christians have perfected the art of saying we love people, but you’d never know it from our actions: How we treat them, how we talk about them – behind their back, to their face.

But Jesus tells us exactly what he means: Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

What does all this mean in this election year? Does it mean say only nice things and don’t criticize and oppose bad candidates, bad agendas, bad laws? Of course not.

It does mean that we have to be as fair to the other side as we want them to be to us. If I don’t like it when other people misrepresent what I stand for, or ascribe bad motives or bad faith to me and my people, I need to be careful not to do those things to others.

Amid this pandemic are we being robbed of something? We wear masks and social distance. I ask is the evil one trying to stop us from being those good Samaritans Pope Francis is calling us to be? Behind every mask is a visible sign of our invisible God.

A question we should perhaps ponder: Am I willing to come to the aid of my enemy — like those prisoners did?
If I don’t, am I following the example of the good Samaritan or that of the priest and the Levite, who saw the need and just kept walking? 

(Father Joey Lirette is currently serving as associate pastor of Sacred Heart Church parish in Cut Off.)