Being Good Neighbors!

Sunday, July 13, 2025

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deut 30:10-14; Col 1:15-20; Lk 10:25-37

The fifteenth Sunday in ordinary time highlights love of neighbors as an integral part of loving God.  

The readings of today underscore neighborliness as an authentic witness to the faith that we practice. 

The first reading explains love of God as following the commandments, which in turn ensures that the entire creation of God receives our love. ‘Loving God with heart and soul’ stands for a more relational idea of love, rejecting any narrow or legalistic connotations. Loving God with heart and soul would also mean to embody God’s will, which is deeply connected with justice, mercy, and love for others. Hence, when we claim to love God, it necessarily means that we love our neighbors because the other side of loving God is loving our neighbors. This is why Christians are called to understand that we love God only as much as we love our neighbors. Love of God and love of neighbors are so interconnected that they mutually reinforce each other. In sum, the first reading invites us to realize that loving God with heart and soul means to honor neighborly love in deeds. 

The Christological hymn in the second reading is Paul’s explanation to the Colossian community on Christ’s neighborly love in two ways. At first, Christ, at his incarnation, became the image of the invisible God. When God became a human in Christ, the sacredness of human life was affirmed. The God in Christ entered the web of human relationships and communities and transformed us into a new creation. Secondly, Paul explicates the neighborly love of Christ by showing that Christ, the firstborn of God’s creation, saved the rest by sacrificing himself on the cross. Thus, Jesus showed the cross as the model of neighborly love. Because the second person of the Trinity suffered and died for humanity, we understand that in Christ, God also suffered for humanity’s redemption. In sum, Paul highlights incarnation and crucifixion as Christ’s acts of neighborly love. 

The Gospel text proves that Jesus is a master storyteller. The lawyer’s question and Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan give us an initial impression that the wounded man who fell victim to the robbers is our neighbor. However, Jesus reverses our understanding that our neighbor is not the victim but one who was neighborly to the victim. In other words, Jesus lets us conclude that our neighborliness rises in degree with our compassion for those who suffer. 

Martin Luther King Jr., in his essay titled ‘On Being a Good Neighbor,’ establishes that the Good Samaritan practiced dangerous, excessive, and universal altruism. The Samaritan was dangerously altruistic when he rushed to help the wounded man, disregarding the thought that he could be ambushed by the same robbers who left the man half-dead. He was excessively altruistic when he not only paid with what he had but also promised to pay back the rest upon his return. He was universally altruistic, because the Samaritan did all these things to someone who was a total stranger to him. Since the Samaritan acted in an unbiased and selfless manner in saving a stranger’s life, Luther extends the application, saying that he would have been or done the same to anyone in the place of the wounded man. Only such an attitude renders the Samaritan ‘Good’ in the eyes of Jesus, who leaves us with the instruction, ‘Go and do likewise.’

The readings of today invite us to reflect on the following insights. 

Externalization of Love: When we internalize God’s love for us, such internalization compels us to sacrifice ourselves for others. In other words, if a heart is shaped by God’s Word, it will by default lead to acts of neighborly love. Hence, loving God is not some abstract ideal. It has an inseparable connection with loving our neighbors unconditionally through daily decisions. 

Self-Emptying Love: Christ’ death on the cross is a manifestation of the supreme act of God’s self-emptying love. The cross championed the model of suffering in love. Christ also showed that love that is not ready to suffer or make sacrifices for others is a mere verbal rhetoric robbed of its radicality. Love is because it suffers for others. 

Concretized Love: Through the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus challenges us with a troubling question: ‘How neighborly are you?’ If we love our neighbors, what are the concrete forms in which we realize it in our daily lives? Hearts that are aligned with God beat for others. Neighborly love feels the pangs of pain when something happens to someone even on the other side of the planet. 

When the Jewish Holocaust was being orchestrated by the Nazis, somebody was compelled to ask, ‘Where was God at Auschwitz?’ When the question looked so reasonable and agreeable to many, one voice retorted, ‘Where was man at Auschwitz?’ 

It is more convenient to blame God for the historical injustices. But only by highlighting what we must never overlook – the human wickedness that perpetrates injustice – do we grow more neighborly.

Let us pray that we may glorify God through our neighborliness.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar