Gospel: Luke 10: 25-37

A doctor, who knew the law wants to test Jesus and asks him. The doctor thinks that he has to do something in order to be able to inherit. He wants to obtain the inheritance through his own personal effort. But an inheritance is not merited. We receive an inheritance by the simple fact of being son or daughter of God. As sons and daughters we can do nothing to merit the inheritance. We can lose it however!

What is important, the principal thing, is to love God! But God comes to me in my neighbor. The neighbor is the revelation of God for me. And because of this, I have to love my neighbor also with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my strength and with all my mind!

Thus, he wants to know: in which neighbor God comes to me. For the Jews the expression "neighbor" was linked to the clan, it was not a neighbor. Anyone who did not belong to the clan was not a neighbor. A

A Samaritan who was travelling passed by. This is the concrete and effective action. It is the progressive action: to arrive, to see, to be moved with compassion, to get close and to act. The parable says "A Samaritan who was travelling". Jesus was also travelling up to Jerusalem. Jesus is the Good Samaritan. The communities should be the Good Samaritan.

At the beginning the doctor had asked: "Who is my neighbor?" Behind the question was the concern for him. He wanted to know: God orders me to love whom, in a way to be able to have my conscience in peace. Humanity is not divided into neighbor and not neighbor. To know who is our neighbor depends on us: to arrive, to see, to be moved with compassion and to get close. If we get close, the other becomes your neighbor! It depends on us and not on the other! Jesus overturns everything and takes away from the doctor the security which could come to him from the Law.