In the book of Leviticus, we read that priests were forbidden to touch a corpse; to do so rendered a person ritually unclean (Lev 21:1–3). The priest and the Levite in this parable, who may have regarded the victim as a corpse, were more concerned about ritual or liturgical purity than they were about the possibility that this person—robbed, beaten, and left half-dead—might be alive and in desperate need of care. They did not see or understand the relationship between ritual worship and the victim on the ground.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the English proverb: “Birds of a feather flock together.” It means that people who are alike in character tend to find each other. Friendships are based on common characteristics and interests, so those of like character typically become friends. Teachers notice this phenomenon throughout their careers. I was always amazed that the troublemakers in the school managed to find each other very quickly; so too the high achievers, the jocks, the mean girls, etc. They all move in groups.
That we readily perceive those who are like us in character and are drawn to them is an interesting knowledge problem. Aquinas refers to this as connatural knowledge, which is a very different way of knowing than the scientific. A person of virtue, for example, who has never studied the science of ethics, will know by inclination what the morally right course of action is. And it is no coincidence that the best gymnastics or figure skating judges were former gymnasts or figure skaters themselves. They have the disposition within them and can readily distinguish between a good and not-so-good routine, where most of us cannot—they all look amazing to us.
What is interesting about this parable is that the Samaritan alone had the eyes to discern who it was that lay half-dead on the road. There is a reason for this. The Christ figure in this parable is not the Samaritan, but the man who fell victim to robbers—stripped, beaten, and left for dead. He is the Christ figure. And the Samaritan is, for all intents and purposes, an outcast. Samaritans were despised by ordinary Jews because of their mixed marriages, among other things.
So, it took one outcast to recognize another outcast. Christ was indeed an outcast: he had table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners; the religious leaders plotted to kill him very early in his ministry; he was labeled a glutton and a drunkard; he healed on the Sabbath, thus breaking the Sabbath and offending the religious and legal sensibilities of the religious leaders; and, of course, he died a criminal, executed by the state authorities.
Christ identifies with the suffering and the rejected. He said that we will be judged not on our liturgical etiquette or our orthodoxy, but on how we chose to relate to the sick, the hungry, the imprisoned, and the naked. As Mother Teresa never tired of saying, Christ disguises himself in these people, regardless of their specific religious affiliation.
Who was it that recognized Christ within the disguise of a victim of violent robbery, stripped and left for dead? One who was like him: the despised and rejected Samaritan—dead, so to speak, to ordinary Jews of the time. The Levite and the priest were so concerned with the rubrics of the law and their own sense of purity before God that they missed the very meaning and purpose of liturgy, which is, of course, the worship of God. But genuine worship involves entering into the heart of God, where we discover our neighbor—for each of us was conceived in that divine heart, not at a particular point in time, but eternally.
When we discover that neighbor in the heart of God, we are then moved to return to the earth to find him, to find her. From that point on, we see them in the divine light—especially those who have a deeper share in Christ’s status as outcast and loser, as he was regarded by the religious elite.
The way we come to recognize the Christ among us—in the broken and the lost—is to become fully conscious of our own brokenness, lastness, and lostness. We have been saved by Christ precisely because he came to seek out the lost. When we allow ourselves to be found by him, we will recognize him wherever he is hiding: in those who share in his status as outcast, reject, and one despised by the winners of this world.
And that’s when our vocation, whatever it is, will take on a new dimension. We become the nurse who recognizes Christ in the sick, the doctor who recognizes Christ in her patients, the mechanic who recognizes Christ in his clients, the teacher who recognizes Christ in her most difficult students, the parents who recognize Christ in the child who did not meet their expectations and evaded their efforts to control and mold him or her.
It makes a world of difference when you encounter someone who sees the wounded, half-dead Christ in you. They look upon you with a certain reverence—as an equal, or better yet, as someone greater. Although such people are rare, they enable you to discover your own unique identity as one who is loved into existence by God, because you get a sense that, as they look upon you, God is giving you his undivided attention through them.
This is the kind of experience that awakens a religious sense in people. Neither arguments, sections of the Catechism, conciliar propositions, nor elaborate vestments will achieve that—but only Christ gazing at us through the eyes of someone who is like him, as the rejected and shunned Samaritan was like the rejected Christ.
Image: The Good Samaritan 1907, Bremen, Ludwig Roselius Collection. Public Domain. Von Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Gemeinfrei, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155714
Douglas McManaman was born in Toronto and grew up in Montreal. He studied philosophy at the University of St. Jerome’s College (Waterloo) and theology at the University of Montreal. He is a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Toronto and ministers to those with mental illness. He taught Religion, Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge for 32 years in Southern Ontario, and he is the current chaplain of the Toronto Chapter of the Catholic Teachers Guild. He is a Senior Lecturer at Niagara University and teach Marriage Prep for the Archdiocese of Toronto. His recent books include Why Be Afraid? (Justin Press, 2014) and The Logic of Anger (Justin Press, 2015), and Christ Lives! (Justin Press, 2017), as well as The Morally Beautiful (Amazon.ca), Introduction to Philosophy for Young People (Amazon.ca), Readings in the Theory of Knowledge, Basic Catholicism, and A Treatise on the Four Cardinal Virtues. He has two podcast channels: Podcasts for the Religious, and Podcasts for Young Philosophers. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Ontario, Canada.
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