A man went down.


Here is my latest post at Aleteia.org

“A man went down into Jericho,” begins Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan.

You probably know the rest. This man was beaten up by bandits and left for dead. Two upstanding members of the man’s community — a priest and an expert in the law — saw him, but both made excuses and left him dying in the ditch. It was a Samaritan — a sworn enemy of the victim’s people — who stopped, scooped up the man, cared for him, took him to safety and provided financially for his convalescence. Jesus, then asks the audience which passerby was the true neighbor, then instructed His scandalized listeners to go and do likewise.

We celebrate this story and rightly exhort one another to be courageous. Even in a post-Christian culture that has rejected so much, we still splash the title “good Samaritan” across the front of the newspaper to praise an unlikely hero who stepped into a dangerous situation to rescue a stranger. Rightly so.

But one thing I have heard about that man going down into Jericho has stayed with me…

Continue reading here:

https://aleteia.org/2017/11/04/the-day-i-realized-i-am-not-the-good-samaritan-after-all/