| The Samaritan did not become good because he showed mercy; he showed mercy because he was good. This is a mystery. Both the Levite and the Samaritan knew what the right thing to do was. Both had other things to do—it is almost never convenient to show mercy. And yet one reveals himself to be good, not because he felt good or thought himself to be good (I’m sure both the priest and Levite thought themselves to be good, or at least good enough). The Samaritan reveals himself to be good not because he met his goal for the day or bagged an experience he had sought. The Samaritan manifests himself to be good because good is already in his heart and it is manifest in the circumstance he finds himself in. The same mystery works in our lives, whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. What we do does not define who we are, it manifests who we are. Nothing hinders us for showing mercy and kindness. Nothing limits our ability to be patient, wise, humble or helpful. Married, single, parent, or prisoner, no circumstance is more or less suited for manifesting who we are, who we are becoming in Christ. Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, experiences or even good deeds. Life consists in transformation, in loving God and neighbour, whoever that neighbour may be. Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. For example, 5 euros a month is it a lot or little? A cup of coffee? It is not that much for a family budget, but it is a significant amount for Pravmir. If everyone reading Pravmir could donate 5 euros a month, they would contribute greatly to our ability to spread the word of Christ, Orthodoxy, life " s purpose, family and society. Also by this author Today " s Articles Most viewed articles Functionality is temporarily unavailable. Most popular authors Functionality is temporarily unavailable. © 2008-2024 Pravmir.com |
| The Lord Jesus saw past labels when He answered the lawyer’s question with a parable. In His parable, the hero of the story is a Samaritan! And Samaritans were considered as bad, ungodly, and less than human by the Jews of the day. Yet the Samaritan demonstrates his true knowledge and love of God through His merciful care of the one who was in need. It is interesting to note that many of the Church fathers see in this parable, the gospel of Christ and the Samaritan as a symbol of our Lord Jesus himself. In fact when you see an icon of this parable, it will typically feature the Lord Jesus as the good Samaritan who tends to the needs of the man who fell among thieves. If this parable is an allegory than who is the man who fell among thieves? It is each of us, all of humanity. We fell prey to Satan and His demonic forces. We were tempted and provoked into sin and the demons stole our immortal inheritance and our virtues, while also wounding our souls. But Christ came to us and found us in that terrible state we were in and He had compassion on us. Origen tells us that according to one interpreter, the inn where the man was taken is a symbol of the Church. St. Augustine tells us that the wine and oil are symbols of the powerful and life giving sacraments of the Church. He says “Robbers left you half-dead on the road, but you have been found lying there by the passing and kindly Samaritan. Wine and oil have been poured on you. You have received the sacrament of the only-begotten Son. You have been lifted onto his mule. You have believed that Christ became flesh. You have been brought to the inn, and you are being cured in the church. That is where and why I am speaking. This is what I too, what all of us are doing. We are performing the duties of the innkeeper.” When we hear these words of the parable we are corrected and taught to see everyone as human and as our neighbor. We are challenged and expected to show mercy to others, even when it is not convenient to do so. When mercy is convenient and easy, it is not worth much in the eyes of God. But when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable and we are still merciful to others, that is noteworthy. I would like to add another aspect to this. Mercy is not simply to care for the physical needs of others, although that is very important. It is to care for their spiritual well-being. |
| John calls Sychar. It is possible that the Evangelist employed this name in mockery, restructuring it from the word shakar (“ply with wine”) or sheker (“lie”). St. John indicates that it was about the sixth hour (noon, in our reckoning), the time of maximum heat, which most likely necessitated taking a rest. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus’ disciples had gone to town to buy food. He turned to the Samaritan woman with a request: Give Me to drink. Probably knowing by His clothing or manner of speech that the one addressing her was a Jew, the Samaritan woman expressed her surprise that He (a Jew) would ask her (a Samaritan) for a drink, bearing in mind the Jews’ hatred and contempt for the Samaritans. But Jesus, Who had come into the world to save everyone, and not just the Jews, explains to the woman that she would not have posed such a question if she had known with Whom she was speaking and what good fortune (the gift of God) God had sent her through this encounter. If she only knew Who was asking her for a drink, she herself would ask Him to quench her spiritual thirst and reveal to her the truth that all people seek to know; and He would give her living water, by which is to be understood the grace of the Holy Spirit (cf., John 7:38). The Samaritan woman did not understand the Lord: she understood the living water to mean the water at the bottom of the well, for which reason she asked Jesus how He could reach the living water if He did not have anything to draw it up with, for the well was deep. Art Thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? (John 4:12). She remembers the Patriarch Jacob with pride and love as the one who left use of this well to his offspring. Then the Lord raises her mind to the highest understanding of His words: Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst: but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life (John 4:13-14). |
| We’re all familiar with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, read today from the Gospel according to St. Luke. A “certain lawyer,” we are told, approached the Lord Jesus, and asks Him how he may inherit eternal life. Our Lord replies by asking the lawyer to interpret the Law of Moses. The answer to the question is the Summary of the Law: Each of us is to love the Lord with all our heart and soul and mind and strength; and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. When the lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” the Lord replies with the parable. We hear about a traveler who is attacked by thieves, beaten, and left for dead by the roadside. We hear of how a priest and a Levite both pass by without offering assistance. We hear about a Samaritan who sets aside the differences that separate him and his people from the Jews to reach out to help another person in need. He shows compassion, takes the time, spends the money needed to help the traveler recover. As such, when the parable is done, and our Lord asks the lawyer who is the traveler’s neighbor, he gives the answer we are all meant to know: Every person is our neighbor; and we are meant to be merciful to everyone. Everyone? Everyone. The person set upon by thieves, even today. We should understand that, in addition to those who steal money and valuables today, there are persons and circumstances that deprive people of time and abilities: those who suffer from drug use and alcohol; those who suffer from other forms of addiction – and computers and the internet can, indeed, be addictive. We should also understand that “thieves” is also a reference to the demons, who steal from us our virtue by leading us into temptation, and wound us unto death by leading us down into sin. Having lured us from the protecting presence of God, the demons strip us naked and cause us to suffer in body, mind, and spirit. No one is immune; nor is anyone strong enough on his own to resist. The ways in which we can show mercy are infinite, but all derive from what we see the Good Samaritan do when he encounters the suffering traveler. Those people you see with the cardboard signs at street corners and freeway interchanges? You can give them some spare change, or a dollar; as the Samaritan paid for the traveler’s lodging. There are soup kitchens and food banks that help to feed the hungry. There are opportunities to help the needy with their electric bills, and other organizations that operate emergency shelters, and help provide housing. In these ways, we help pour wine, and soothing oil, on the wounds that others in our midst are suffering. |
| If we see people following dangerous paths in their lives, if we really love them, isn’t one of the best ways to show them our love to warn them of danger? As parents, we show compassion to our children in exactly this way—“don’t run into the street, don’t touch a hot stove, don’t get into a car with strangers, don’t hang around with bad people, don’t do drugs, etc.” Many roads in life are full of danger. Yet how often do we see neighbors following such grievous paths and remain silent or pass them by? Perhaps we ourselves are, knowingly or unknowingly, on such paths, and only the compassion of another can save us from being wounded, beaten or destroyed, or at least incite us to consider an alternate, safer route. In this sense, the Church must intentionally strive to fulfill the role of Christ as the good Samaritan. The Church is to be a lighthouse that guides lost and wandering souls to the Kingdom of God—“a haven of peace in a tortured world.” Thus, the Church is a life-saving station that nurtures that equips and dispatches good Samaritans to be neighbors to others, or a spiritual GPS that displays the preferred path to a desired destination and warns of the dangers inherent on other roads. Each of us has, in our individual lives, been beaten, bruised, wounded and left for dead, in one way or the other, by the “thugs” of passions and sin. But, thanks be to God, Jesus Christ has repeatedly been—and will forever be—our good Samaritan, applying His healing oil and wine to our wounds in the Mysteries of His Holy Church. Especially as our thoughts now turn to Advent, Thanksgiving and the Great Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, may our love for our neighbor truly take flesh in doing God’s will, so that we in the Church truly may be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world,” for that’s what our good Samaritan, Jesus Christ, calls us to be—and do ! Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. |
| We’re all well aware of the urgent and genuine needs of our neighbors. And since the Orthodox Church is pretty much everywhere in the world, the word “neighbor” for us has global application. No, we can’t begin to help everyone, but neither can we violate Our Lord’s commandment to show compassion to the wounded neighbors on our paths or our doorsteps. Indeed, we should and do show our compassion by praying for them, but that’s not enough. The Bible says, “If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?” [James 2:14-15]. It’s akin to wishing ‘Merry Christmas’ to someone who’s just lost everything. Our faith must blossom into good works, not just good wishes. Actions always speak louder than words. In fact, in the parable, we notice the absence of words. The Samaritan didn’t interrogate the wounded man, he just acted. What wounded neighbors need is not rhetoric but resources. In identifying Himself with the least of the brethren, Our Lord says, “I was hungry and you gave me food,” not “I was hungry and you formed a task force to discuss it or you applied for a government grant.” Our financial donations toward various charities, though helping to empower the Church to show compassion on our behalf, don’t absolve us from personal responsibility. But there is yet another way for us to show compassion for our neighbors that’s not related in the parable. It’s simply this: If we really love our neighbors, we will also make every effort to warn them not to travel dangerous paths! The road from Jerusalem to Jericho, where the beaten man had been mugged, had a reputation among locals as being an extremely dangerous one. Some historians refer to it as the “road of blood,” upon which unscrupulous robbers hid, waiting to pounce on new victims. So the story of the good Samaritan would’ve been a “non-story” had some compassionate neighbor told the traveler, “You’re risking your life if you go that way!” Instead of being called “the good Samaritan,” he could’ve been called “the foolish traveler!” |
| How dear and how close to our heart is this Good Samaritan! How moving his love, sympathy, kindness and generosity. How compunctionate the sacrifice he shows to a stranger, one may even say an enemy, who had " fallen among thieves! " On the other hand, how we condemn the priest and Levite of the parable, who saw their own countryman wounded and dying, yet declined to help the unfortunate man. We are truly appalled and troubled by their callousness and inhumanity. Pondering this parable, it seems to us most of all that we are convinced beyond any doubt that we would act just as the noble Samaritan acted. May God grant that it may be so. However, let us delve into our conscience and test and weigh our heart; more simply put, let us look back over the life we have lived. Then we will see how far we are from this ideal. How many times have we experienced the pricking of our conscience, which has reproached, and still reproaches us, for not helping and not sharing in any needed way in the woes or misfortunes of our neighbor, and perhaps, in certain cases, for even being the cause of his sufferings? How can this be? We so sincerely desire to do good, but instead of good we more often than not do evil. We so sincerely desire to follow the example of the Samaritan with all our heart, yet in our life we walk in the footsteps of the heartless and callous priest and Levite. How can this be so? The solution to this lies in the fact that not only do we fail to fulfill the highest commandments of love for God and neighbor, but even pervert them. The Lord says, He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me (Jn. 14: 21). This means that love for God is shown forth in the practical fulfillment of His commandments. According to these words of the Savior, which also forge a clear, full and unbreakable bond between all the commandments of God, one cannot fulfill the commandment of love for God while breaking any other commandment. And in reality, he who says that he loves God, but hates his brother, is a liar, according to the words of John the Theologian, the Apostle of love (see 1 Jn. 4: 30). |
| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Navigation The Good Leaven from Outside the Supposed Goodness Source: Notes on Arab Orthodoxy Metropolitan Siluan (Muci) 22 May 2022 The believer never stops drawing near the Resurrection until the Resurrection itself snatches him from the way he is approaching it. Furthermore, it drives him towards its true approach to man, whoever he may be, under the light of the dispensation that Christ inaugurated amidst our sinfulness which is still deeply rooted within us. There is no more obvious example than what happened before the eyes of the Apostles themselves when they came across Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan woman and there are no more effective words, until our present day, than those uttered then by Christ unto them! None of the Evangelists records any conversation of Christ longer than the one that brought Him together with the Samaritan woman. It seems “it was necessary” for Christ to pass through Samaria, where there was Jacob’s Well in Sychar. It is a sort of necessity for which we find no need at all because nothing can– or rather, nothing must– happen there. Such an encounter was, in fact, the fruit of fervent prayer or a desire extended and poured out in service to the salvific divine dispensation for the sake of “that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). That verse does not apply to us (because we think that we are not one of those), but rather to the Samaritan woman because the Gospel must be “useful” for someone, especially “this” sort of person (that is, those to whom can apply our standards in classifying those whom we consider that are lost). Jesus found in the Samaritan woman the good leaven in order to tell us about those who are worthy of resurrection and how their resurrection comes about. She is a leaven that transformed from the old man to the new man, a leaven that leavened the dough of all Samaria through the testimony of her confessing what she did– not for cheap publicity for herself, but in order to present the person who revealed her deeds to her without any human foreknowledge and who raised her up from them. Her joy at the One who loved her inundated her and she, in turn, poured Him out upon those who had not hesitated to roll their eyes at her immoral life, forcing her to go out to the well at midday in order to fulfil her need for water. |
| Christ’s Parable of the Good Samaritan represents His moral sense, and He teaches the parable to instruct us in what the morality of God’s Kingdom looks like for us Christians. We are to go and do as the Samaritan did – show mercy. That is how we become neighbors and fulfill the Gospel commandments. Others, who we think should be the ones helping the victims of this crisis, Muslims for example, might walk around or away from the problem. That doesn’t justify our doing the same. We are Christians, and thus are taught by our Lord to be Good Samaritans. This is the Gospel commandment for us. We prove our faithfulness to Christ by living according to His teachings and commandments, not by comparing ourselves to Muslims or by taking actions that serve only to protect ourselves. Christ told this parable exactly because Jews and Samaritans were enemies. Yet the Samaritan is the lesson’s moral hero. He is the hero because He does what is expected of any righteous person. The recognized religious leaders in the parable fail to do what we know was expected of them. Jesus wasn’t even teaching something new to the lawyer. He was simply illuminating what the Law said. The Good Samaritan follows Torah, even though he is not a Jew. Christ shows what St. Paul later would teach – “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh;but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.” (Romans 2;28-29). Jesus tells this parable to remind one man that it was in his power to be a neighbor to others. He claimed to be willing to love neighbor, but then wanted to screen out those he didn’t want to be his neighbor. Christ catches him by surprise, for Jesus tells him that loving the neighbor does not begin in determining who the neighbor is bur rather begins with what is in our own hearts. Fr. Ted " s Blog Fr. Ted Bobosh 23 ноября 2015 г. Смотри также |
| The priest and the Levite, by virtue of their positions, should have been the first people to help the injured stranger, yet they ignore him and pass by on the other side of the street. Finally a Samaritan passes by. The Samaritans were considered to be schismatics. When Photini, the woman at the well, asked Jesus if it was alright to worship in the temple of the Samaritans, Jesus tells her that “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). To the shame of the Jewish priest and the Levite, it is the schismatic Samaritan who is the one who finally helps the stranger. He cleans and binds his wounds, places him on his donkey, and takes him to an inn, where he pays the innkeeper to take care of him. The good Samaritan is first of all an icon, an image of Jesus Christ Himself. We are all wounded and in need of spiritual healing, and our Savior binds and cleanses our wounds through the Holy Mysteries of the Church. The inn is the Church, and the innkeeper are the bishops and priests who are the servants of Christ, whose task it is to assist our Savior in taking care of us for our spiritual, physical and emotional healing. All Christians are called upon to imitate our Savior, so the good Samaritan is also an icon of how each of us are called to be. Be kind to one another, be patient, and love each other, and we will be imitating our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Amen. ________________________________________________ Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. |
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