Preaching on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Pope Francis spoke of the fact that to ignore the suffering of another person is to ignore God.

There are four principle characters in the parable.  The victim, who was an innocent traveler robbed by bandits and left wounded by the side of the road to Jericho, is a symbol of Jesus.  A priest and a Levite, both observant Jews, are also part of the story as is a Samaritan traveler, who is considered an outsider because he is from a different Judean toparchy or province. Bad blood, even enmity, had existed between the observant Jews and Samaritans dating back to the Exile.

Jesus was making the point that our neighbor, whom Jews were charged to love as themselves, (Leviticus 19:18) meant more than their associate and fellow Hebrew, and that religion required more than the performance of religious rites. His teaching was brought home by the observant priest’s and Levite’s cold-hearted indifference to the suffering in contrast to the compassionate mercy of the despised Samaritan.

“It is not automatic that one who frequents the house of God and has known His mercy knows how to love his neighbor,” the pope noted. “God’s mercy for us is related to our mercy for our neighbor; […] If I do not open the doors of my heart to the poor, the door stays closed for God too. And this is terrible.”

“Showing compassion to others like God shows compassion to us is the sign that one is close to God. To ignore human suffering — what does that mean? It means ignoring God,” he told a crowd of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square, adding, “If I do not draw near to the man or woman or child or older person who is suffering,” —   with their sin and with their wounds — “I cannot draw near to God”

I fear that the deluge of catastrophic events, man-made and natural, have inured us to the immense amount of human pain, suffering and deprivation that exists in the world today. The unimaginable has become commonplace: mass beheadings, kidnapping and trafficking of children, wanton rapine by armies, victimization of those hoping for refuge, mass murder of innocent people and natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, pandemics.

When we are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, often beyond comprehension, our mind may sanitize those numbers and they cease representing suffering human beings and become statistics. A statistic does not have a name or a face. It doesn’t hurt or weep or die.

It is what Pope Francis refers to as “the globalization of indifference.” (Evangelii Gaudium 46) “Almost without being aware of it,” the Holy Father explains, “we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.” (Evangelii Gaudium 54).

John Donne in his meditation “No man is an island,” grasps the reality of our human connectedness when he reminds us that, “Any man’s death diminishes me.”  We can neither escape nor deny our human bond. We are one with each other as Jesus became one with us.

The Gospel is a call to action, not to inertia or apathy, much less to denial. Outrage demands a response, not a retreat.

“The gods of disorder and upheaval enjoyed a busy night.”  This headline in The New Yorker Today online referring to the Brexit election caught my attention. Sometimes it seems like forces of turbulence and upheaval are prowling our world sowing fear and disorder among us. The Middle East is aflame, Europe is awash with hundreds of thousands of displaced persons seeking refuge, the European Union is threatened, Christianity is under attack, terrorism is increasing and even the weather has become hostile. Who or what is the maleficent force behind this plague on our planet?

In the words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The ancient Romans and Greeks would indeed have attributed such times of tribulation to angry gods. Today, we know the real culprit is human greed, avarice and covetousness. Yes, just like all those things mentioned in the Ten Commandments.

You will recall that Scripture identifies the Original Sin as our desire to be like gods (Gen. 3:5). Stop and reflect for a moment. Each of the occurrences that I have mentioned finds its ultimate cause in human greed or avarice often manifested in a desire for power. Ambition seeks to fulfill potential; greed and avarice are the excessive desires for power or wealth.

I believe that few people admit, even to themselves, that they seek to commit an evil act.  Rather, they justify committing evil by disguising it as an apparent good. It is very easy. You demonize your opponent, thereby justifying his destruction … he was evil. Right! It’s an old trick but it’s still very much in use. Our politics is rampant with demonizing.

Ideas, individuals, programs, projects, political parties, proposals even laws of the land are demonized, regardless of their merit, so that they may be targeted for destruction with greed, avarice and power often the underlying justification.

The anti-venoms for disorder and upheaval caused by greed and avarice are the common good, love, compassion, consideration and mercy toward others. The Constitution (Art. 1, Sec. 8) speaks of the “general welfare,” a euphemism for common good, but it has been attacked and distorted by those who find the concept antithetical to their purpose.

In his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, (218) Pope Francis wrote, “Demands involving the distribution of  wealth, concern for the poor and human rights cannot be suppressed under the guise of  creating a consensus on paper or a transient peace for a contented minority. The dignity of the human person and the common good rank higher than the comfort of those who refuse to renounce their privileges. When these values are threatened, a prophetic voice must be raised.”

As disciples of Jesus, we must be that prophetic voice against the forces of avarice and greed that sow disorder and upheaval.

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Image Credit: Max on Flickr

Keeping our eyes on the road and keeping our eyes upon Jesus have a lot in common.

Most accidents are caused by distractions to the driver inside, not outside, of the car. According to a study released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), “80 percent of automobile accidents and 65 percent of near-accidents involve at least some form of driver distraction within three seconds of the crash or near-miss.”

Some of the most common distractions are: talking on a cell phone, texting, reaching for a moving object or a child inside the car, applying makeup, eating or drinking, reading a map or the navigation screen. All drive our attention away from what is essential … keeping our eyes on the road to arrive safely.

As Christians, keeping our eyes upon Jesus is what is essential, for he is “the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) Like the driver, our eyes are easily drawn away from Jesus by internal distractions, such as greed, addictions to drugs, alcohol, pornography, gambling and other amoral behavior. But excessive attention to those things that are, in themselves, good or morally neutral can also distract our eyes from Jesus. If our work, our hobby, a good cause or even our devotion to sports, or to another activity or person becomes the most important thing in our life, we have made it our god and our eyes are no longer on Jesus.

We are easily driven by self-gratification believing it will bring the happiness that we crave. Philosopher Blaise Pascal addressed this in his classic book, Pensees. “What else does this craving and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself” (148/428).

Keep your eyes upon Jesus, the only true road to the Father.

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Image Credit: Leo Reynolds on Flickr

Let’s start with an astounding paragraph from Karen Tumulty’s story in Monday’s Washington Post on the killing of 50 people and wounding of 53 others at a nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning.

He did it with a handgun and an AR-15 — the same semiautomatic rifle that was part of the arsenals used to kill 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater in 2012; 20 first-graders and six adults later that year in Newtown, Connecticut.; and 14 others at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California last December.

We are talking about a killing machine, but here is what the National Rifle Association wrote about this weapon in its blog:

Today, the AR-15 has soared in popularity amongst gun owners, due to a wide-range of factors. It is customizable, adaptable, reliable and accurate that can be used in sport shooting, hunting and self-defense situations.

This rifle is a semi-automatic spin off of the US Army’s M16 fully automatic rifle. Semi-automatic means that it will fire bullets as fast as a person can pull the trigger. It is meant to kill — fast — and in great numbers — just like it did in Aurora and Newtown and San Bernardino — and Orlando.

Here is another quote from Monday’s Washington Post Wonkblog:

America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms,” American-born al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn said in a video. “You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle without a background check and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?

Our gun laws are an invitation to kill. They would be ludicrous if the situation were not so tragic. By their fruits you know them (Matt 7:16) and the fruits of our gun control laws are bitter indeed — no, they are fatal.

The second amendment rightly protects our right to bear arms for hunting, sport, self-defense and other legitimate purposes. There is no legitimate purpose for making this kind of weapon available to the general public.

The issue is one of common sense and self-defense … the defense of our culture and our way of life.

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Image Credit: Mounting Scope on AR-15, Flickr