Bishop Enrique Díaz Díaz shares with Exaudi readers his reflection on the Gospel of this Sunday, July 13, 2025, entitled:  “Hear me, Lord, for you are good.”

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Deuteronomy 30:10-14: “My commandments are in your mouth and your heart”

Psalm 68:  “Hear me, Lord, for you are good”

Colossians 1, 15-20:  “God was pleased to reconcile all things in Christ”

Luke 10:25-37:  “Go and do likewise.”

A person without reference points is lost, wandering. He needs reference points to sustain him and give him direction. Today, Jesus sets us on that path. Before a representative of the official Jewish religion, Jesus explains the essence of the doctrine of the Kingdom: to love God and to love one’s neighbor. After the love of God, the love of one’s brothers and sisters is the most important. Today’s life is not rich in love for the most needy, the most wounded, but quite the opposite. The parable of the Good Samaritan takes on special importance because we live in a world where many put their well-being or profit before any other consideration, without accepting or admitting that there is much pain and poverty around us. I remember Pope Francis’s expression when he referred precisely to this indifference to suffering and insisted: “You find the wounds of Jesus by doing works of mercy and bringing relief to the body, and also to the soul, of your wounded brother, because he is hungry, thirsty, naked, humiliated, a slave, because he is in prison, in the hospital. These are the wounds of Jesus today.” “We must touch the wounds of Jesus, we must caress the wounds of Jesus, heal the wounds of Jesus with tenderness, we must kiss the wounds of Jesus, and this in a literal way.” And he concluded that to touch the living God, there is no need to “take refresher courses,” but rather to enter into the wounds of Jesus, and for this, “you only have to go out into the street.”

Thus, in this parable, we are presented with how the Good Samaritan, full of kindness, discovers a “neighbor” in the poor man lying by the side of the road. It is striking that a man considered impure, far removed from the law and the prophets, is held up as a model of the true Israelite. Furthermore, Jesus’s narrative leaves the priest and the Levite, representatives of the true believers of Judea, in a very bad light. A Samaritan whom we have often imagined as Christ himself, who comes to pay all our debts, who heals our wounds, who lifts us up from the path… And this reflection is very valid and very much in line with the proposal made by Saint Paul in the passage from the Letter to the Colossians, where he affirms that in Christ God was pleased to reconcile all things, in heaven and on earth, and to give them peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Could we imagine a better Samaritan, and to welcome us into better hands, than those of Jesus? There are many situations and occasions when evil leaves us stranded on the side of the road, and Christ is there to rescue us and give us new life.

But with the Pope’s words, a slightly different idea came to me: that Jesus wanted to describe himself not in the Samaritan, but in the poor man abandoned on the road. And then the perspective of the parable changes, and the way it directly affects us. Because if Christ is the humiliated man, we can be either the thieves who have thus harmed him, robbed him, and injured him; or the priest or the Levite we pass by, preoccupied with our laws and our rites; or perhaps also the innkeeper licking his lips, anticipating a profit at the expense of that poor, wounded man. If the insistence is that Christ is the man abandoned on the road, we can easily discover him in all those abandoned, outside the path of progress, well-being, and society… that despised man is Christ, that ignored man is Christ, this poor, abandoned and injured woman is Christ… And we are the joyful “good and just men and women” who allow ourselves the luxury of passing by without even noticing the situation in which we ourselves have placed them. Yes, we are, because we are complicit in an unjust and oppressive system that upholds a few and harms vast numbers of nameless men and women. These faces of Jesus are those discriminated against, marginalized, and despised by society.

We cannot adopt, as some do, the attitude of the innkeeper, who serves people to earn a few pesos. There are many similar attitudes among people who boast of serving the poor, taking the biggest slice of the pie. Consider, for example, the tricks of round-up schemes or tax exemptions, where it appears to be giving charity, but there is a hidden agenda: benefiting the poor. Thus, many programs and charities, disguised as aid, are real businesses. Christ awaits us today in each of those men and women lying on the road. Paul himself gives us the guidelines for discovering this Jesus, for: “Christ is the image of the invisible God…” and now He makes Himself visible in the poor and from there He wants to build His Kingdom. Will we be able to discover Him, or will we assault Him, pass Him by, or take advantage of Him?

Which of these figures do we most often identify with? Why? What do we need to change in ourselves, in our society, and in our system so that we don’t leave our neighbors, Christs, stranded by the side of the road? What are we willing to do to recognize Jesus, our neighbor, and to commit ourselves to him?

Lord, grant that all of us who call ourselves Christians may faithfully imitate Christ in his love, commitment, and devotion to his brothers and sisters, even giving our lives for them and building a better world. Amen.