Our Gospel today is pretty
clear. A lawyer, a scholar of the law,
asks Jesus “Teacher,
what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus puts it back on him. Being
a good Jew he gets it right on the first try:
“You shall love the Lord, your
God, with all your heart, with all your being,
with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
He nailed it on the first
try. He should have stopped while he
was ahead. But being a lawyer he
couldn’t let it go. “Who is my neighbor?” It is
a perfect setup, and Jesus tells him a story and then asks, who “was neighbor
to the robbers’ victim?”
The
lawyer, a little more hesitantly this time perhaps, gets it right again: “The
one who treated him with mercy.” Then comes the clincher: “Go and do likewise.”
Go. Do.
These are action words. You want
eternal life? For Jesus it is not
primarily about what you believe, about how you pray, about where you go to
church. For Jesus it is about action. “Go
and do likewise.”
You
see, action is the tough part. It is (at
least sometimes) easy to see what needs to be done. It is difficult to do it. But if you want eternal life, if you want to
be part of the followers of Jesus, then you have to get off your hindquarters
and go and do likewise.
It
is not enough to see the problem and understand the solution, and then stop
there. Thomas Edison said “Inspiration
without execution is hallucination.” St.
James in his Epistle said “Faith without
works is dead.” (2:26) Jesus said “Go
and do likewise.”
You
have to do it. You have to feed the
hungry. Maybe that means you volunteer
at the Micah 6 Foodbank in our area.
Maybe that means you also donate money to St. Vincent de Paul or other
groups that feed the poor. It certainly
means that you exercise your responsibility as a citizen to support programs
that feed the poor. Last week the United
States House of Representatives passed a farm bill that totally, completely,
entirely eliminated Food Stamps. The
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called SNAP, (or Food Stamps) was
not reduced, was not controlled, was not restricted. For the first time in 40 years it was
eliminated. The elderly, the sick,
children, will go hungry. We, you and I,
have to let our Representatives know that this is unacceptable in this country
of plenty.
“Go and do likewise.” You
have to care for the person in need and welcome the stranger. Maybe that means you help an elderly neighbor
by grocery shopping for him or her.
Maybe you donate to the Thursday outreach program here at St. Austin’s
through the monthly Persons in Need collection that will be taken up today. It certainly means that you work for Justice,
especially for those without power: the
poor, the sick, the immigrant.
Our
country needs – in justice – to enact comprehensive immigration reform that
will respect people’s dignity, that will keep families together, that will provide
a path to citizenship for those who have been here for years and worked hard to
build up our country for years, and that will will protect our borders from
criminal and disruptive elements.
Recently
– on July 8 in fact - Pope Francis went to the town of Lampedusa in
Sicily. Near there immigrants fleeing
Africa had drowned. Pope Francis went
there to pray. He said: “When I first heard of this tragedy a few
weeks ago, and realized that it happens all too frequently, it has constantly
come back to me like a painful thorn in my heart. So I felt that I had to come
here today, to pray and to offer a sign of my closeness, but also to challenge
our consciences lest this tragedy be repeated. Please, let it not be repeated!” And we all know that immigrants coming into
our country often die of thirst and exposure, trying to cross the most
inhospitable desert places in our State.
Later
in that same homily last Monday Pope Francis said: “Today no one in our world feels responsible; we
have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters. We have
fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the levite whom Jesus described in
the parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the side of
the road, and perhaps we say to ourselves: "poor soul…!", and then go
on our way. It’s not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured,
assuaged. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes
us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles
which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty
illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the
globalization of indifference. In this globalized world, we have fallen into
globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it
doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!”
Yet the Gospel today shows
us that it is our business. Jesus
commands us, “Go and do likewise.” It is not complicated. If you go to www.justiceforimmigrants.org you will find the US Catholic Bishops website on immigration. They make it very easy for you to send an
electronic postcard to your Senator and Representatives, calling for
comprehensive immigration reform. Go and
do it.
What must we do to inherit
everlasting life? “Go and do likewise.”
Pope Francis’ complete homily
(in translation) can be found at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130708_omelia-lampedusa_en.html
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