The Good Samaritan

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

The only way to describe the relationship between Samaritans and Jews is as bitter enemies. In the mind of the Jews, the Samaritans had sold out. Their race reaches back to the beginning of the Babylonian captivity. Assyria left behind the weak, the old, the infirm, and anyone they considered useless as slaves. In order to survive these people made alliances with their neighbors, sealed those alliances through marriage, and thereby broke the commandment which forbade intermarriage with non-Israelite peoples. At the end of the captivity, when the Jews were allowed to return to Israel and to rebuild their temple, they found the Samaritans and rejected them entirely even when the Samaritans volunteered to help with the rebuilding of the temple.

That bitter enmity lasted for centuries. The synoptic Gospels record that Jesus was not permitted to enter into their territory. St. Luke records the healing of ten lepers on the boundaries of Samaria and includes one Samaritan leper in the group. Only St. John records that Jesus actually entered Samaritan country, but that incident (the woman at the well) seems to be prompted by the fact that the Johannine community had decided to extend their missionary efforts to Samaria. The story of the woman at the well is all about missionary effort.

This background makes the parable of the Good Samaritan all the more telling. The lawyer who posed the question to Jesus certainly got an answer that would cause him to reconsider his position. The answer also asks us to examine our own lives and ask "Who is our neighbor?"