Jonah 1:1-2:1-2, 11
Jonah 2:3,4,5,8
Luke 10:25-37
Summary
“
Jonah, resisting God’s call to rescue a city, had to die to self and find
in the deep his true self. In the Psalm, Jonah experiences that his
prayer is heard and that his life will be rescued from the pit. The Gos-
pel’s Good Samaritan delays his journey to rescue a beaten, half-dead
man on the side of the road, teaching us as disciples of Jesus Christ
what it means to be neighbor.
Reflection
This Gospel reading has inspired Christian conscience and action for
2000 years. In recent history –1885 -- Sister Mary Wood founded what
became Good Samaritan Hospital in the City of Los Angeles. I will never estab-
lish a hospital, but I am
called by Jesus to be hospi-
table, to love my neighbor as
myself, a lifelong call experi-
enced by me so far as small
steps forward despite back-
slides toward my self-
centered self.
I ask, “Who is the man,
stripped, beaten, and
robbed?” Whoever he is, his
suffering does not move the
priest or Levite to compas-
sion. Seeing him, they pass
by on the opposite side. He
is nuisance, not neighbor to
them.