Go and Do Likewise
This past Sunday I had an unusual experience right before Mass. Most unexpectedly, just before we began the celebration, as I was looking at the chalice and paten, the Lord spoke to me…“from them” (I don’t know how else to describe it). I heard Jesus ask me, “Do you understand what I want to have happen today? Do you know why I am giving myself to you? Do you realize what I desire to take place in you?” It was a piercing voice, strong, almost sharp, and it penetrated right into my heart and my mind. It was convicting yet without condemning.
The Gospel on Sunday was the parable of the good Samaritan. In this all-too familiar passage, at least for many of us, Jesus tells of a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. The man is assaulted by robbers, beaten, stripped and left half dead in a ditch. Lying there, this man has nothing to identify him— no clothes, no language, no accent. The Fathers of the Church from the beginning identified this man as everyman.
The man in the ditch is me. He’s you.
The Fathers also regularly identified the good Samaritan as Jesus. Upon seeing the plight of the man in the ditch this one is “moved with compassion.” That’s how the Lectionary we heard last Sunday translated the original Greek. But that’s not what it says. It’s much, much more visceral than that. In his first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI writes that a better translation would be that the good Samaritan’s heart is wrenched open.
God, the Creator of a universe that is 90+ billion light years across, is so viscerally moved by the situation of our race, beaten, stripped and left half dead by our ancient foe, that He takes on flesh, goes to the cross, and reconciles all things to Himself by His Precious Blood. On the cross, God’s Heart is literally wrenched open, torn asunder by the soldier’s lance. And at every Mass, that very same Blood is given to us to drink so that something will happen. To be sure, the Eucharist is given to us for a number of reasons, but Sunday the Lord was speaking emphatically to me about just one: that I would “go and do likewise.” Jesus wants us to see what He sees, to feel what He feels and to act as disciples who are viscerally moved by the situation of others.
The real question in the parable of the good Samaritan isn’t about who is my neighbor. The question is about whether or not I consider myself neighbor to everyone else. And the sobering reality is that I can often be so self-absorbed, so selfish, so sinful, that I don’t even notice the person in need, or I write them off for whatever reason.
But Jesus gives us the Eucharist to change our hearts. He gives us His Heart under the appearance of bread and wine and, unlike regular food, we don’t break it down; He breaks us down. Or wants to. If only we will let Him.
I recently re-watched the movie “Miracle,” the true story about the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team that shocked the world and defeated the Soviet Union team, long considered unconquerable. Herb Brooks, the coach of that remarkable US team, repeatedly challenged his players in preparation for the unthinkable — a gold medal. At one point in their grueling training he said to them, “I dare you to be better than you are. I dare you to be a thoroughbred.”
That voice was something like what I heard Jesus say to me right before Mass last Sunday. Jesus is, after all, the best of coaches, the truly greatest athlete of all time. With more conviction than Brooks, great a coach as he was, Jesus said, “You are able to love much, much more than you know. You can do better. Not by trying harder, but by letting Me break you down into Myself.”
In this week, let us approach Jesus in communion with ever greater awareness of Who it is who is giving Himself to us and what it is He wants to have happen as a result. Let us “go and do likewise” for the many lying in the ditches all around us. Let us make God visible to them by our words and actions.
