This paragraph through number 105 looks “BEYOND A WORLD OF ‘ASSOCIATES.’” Pope Francis translates the roles of the parable into today’s categories: the injured person was irrelevant to the important people of the day. Jesus reveals that a foreigner is the one who pauses his agenda to assist.
101. Let us now return to the parable of the Good Samaritan, for it still has much to say to us. An injured man lay on the roadside. The people walking by him did not heed their interior summons to act as neighbors; they were concerned with their duties, their social status, their professional position within society. They considered themselves important for the society of the time, and were anxious to play their proper part. The man on the roadside, bruised and abandoned, was a distraction, an interruption from all that; in any event, he was hardly important. He was a “nobody”, undistinguished, irrelevant to their plans for the future. The Good Samaritan transcended these narrow classifications. He himself did not fit into any of those categories; he was simply a foreigner without a place in society. Free of every label and position, he was able to interrupt his journey, change his plans, and unexpectedly come to the aid of an injured person who needed his help.
As the title suggests, many people today look upon other human beings as “associates,” as people who help us further our own agendas and who aren’t burdens or distractions to our mission of the day. We find such attitudes both outside of the Church and within it.
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