St. Thomas and the Good Samaritan

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

Before we delve into the gospel today, I wanted to thank all those who were praying for us. Last Sunday, I announced that we were going to be making our annual retreat this past week, and so we made that retreat. And retreats are often something like that. A lot of times, I’ve often said this during encounters, that it’s like the Lord is planting seeds, and when the Lord plants seeds, you don’t always know; like when you plant a seed, a seed just disappears, until little by little, if you care for it, it begins to grow. And so often we’re not aware of what the Lord has done, what the Holy Spirit has done in that retreat, until later on. But I just wanted to mention a few things. One was, you know, that we had that very tragic flash flooding in this area with the river Guadalupe and then on Sunday night, there was, we posted this in our email on Friday, there was a beautiful, one of the most beautiful rainbows I had seen. And it seemed like, and then in the message the Lord gave us, we referenced that on Friday, that that was like a sign for Him, of a sign of His presence. So that was like the beginning of the retreat. And there were some things, I mean, some things that happened in the Church, which seemed to me during this past week, very significant in this great reconquest of the Lord. So, I just wanted to mention three of those. And one was, one was that on last Monday, the Vatican released a document on the implementation of the synodal path. And that was a big part of Francis’s effort – program was the synodal path. And so, Leo and his pontificate was in many ways, strongly confirming. And he said that explicitly, strong and confirming that following the same synodal path of Francis. And so that is very significant. And if, as the Lord has told us that Francis is a usurper who is part of a great plan to infiltrate and corrupt and spiritually destroy the Church, then anyone who follows that same path is, well, that’s a very, very bad sign. And in fact, that the second point I wanted to make was that Bishop Strickland, a few days later, released a very strong document, calling people, warning people about the dangers of the synodal path. It’s a kind of ambiguous, confusing terminology, which in many ways sounds kind of harmless, but oftentimes behind very harmless sounding language; and we see that a lot of times in bureaucracy and in our government, there’s terrible things that are planned behind that language. And so, Bishop Strickland was speaking very strongly about the dangers of the synodal spirit. And so again, Leo is clearly following in that same spirit. And then the third and final thing I wanted to mention involves John Henry Westen, who, as many of you know, he’s the co-founder and was the CEO of LifeSite news. And he was just, they just pretty much fired him, just this past week, also. And he had a special to us, because when about a year and a half ago, when we were discerning that the Lord was wanting us to release these messages that Sister had been receiving, the one person, the one journalist that came to my mind that I would like to share them with was John Henry Westen, because most journalists would not want to have anything to do with this. But John Henry had shown an extraordinary courage in speaking out about what was really going on in the Church, and also a great deep faith in the signs and manifestations that the Lord is giving these days, so he’s a very exceptional journalist. And so, I thought he’s the one journalist, but I didn’t know any way to contact him. And so right when we needed him, he contacted us. Out of the blue, contacted us. Someone had talked about us, and he didn’t know anything about the messages, but he was coming down in this area, and someone had suggested that he contact us. And so that was just so providential. That’s why the messages right away became much more known than we had ever planned, because of John Henry Weston. And so those, those three events of the thing about, I think the about the synodal document is it’s making even clearer that this pontificate is basically, and it’s essentially a continuation of Francis’s pontificate. It’s not a radical change. He said it himself. Leo said himself, it’s a continuation. And that’s the spirit that Bishop Strickland was calling people to be aware of. And, and now this John, that’s one of the things, I think one of the things that got John Henry Westen in difficulty was because he was also warning people about what was going on under Leo’s pontificate. And so, I think maybe now John Henry will actually be more free to speak. So, I just that seemed to me not a coincidence, that those three important events happened during our little retreat. So again, I thank you for that. So, this gospel, this very famous gospel of the Good Samaritan, begins with someone asking Jesus, who is my neighbor, and Jesus gives an odd response, who is my neighbor? And to respond, he tells this parable. But then at the end of the parable, He says, then he asked the man a question. He says, “who, in your opinion, was the neighbor to the victim of the robbery?” And the man said, “the one who showed him mercy.” And so, He says, “go and do the same.” So, we know in this gospel that Jesus is calling us to imitate the Good Samaritan. But what’s striking in that question, when he says, who was the neighbor to the victim? So, He’s asking, to me, He’s basically telling the man, if you were in the situation of the victim, who would seem like a neighbor to you. And so, He’s inviting us to put ourselves in the situation of the victim. And so, this leads me to; I wanted to share with you a commentary by St Thomas Aquinas on this gospel. And St Thomas Aquinas is following, in many ways, gathering the tradition of the Fathers of the Church. And so, I’ll also add some quotes from other Fathers of the Church here, but it’s a good example of their deep faith in meditating the richness of Scripture and the different senses of Scripture in the allegorical and mystical interpretations that they often focused on. And so, they see in this traveler who becomes a victim, the victim of the robbery, they see both well, they see basically all us sinners, beginning with Adam, but all of us, because we’re all sinners. And so then, who is the Good Samaritan in that sense? And they see the Good Samaritan as an image of Jesus Himself. And so, I’ll share with you St Thomas’ commentary. And so, St Thomas is very organized and very, very so. He says, “In this parable, there are three points to be noted.” He says, “First, the misery of the sinners,” when it says, a certain man went down from Jerusalem. Secondly, is “shown the mercies of Christ to the sinner,” when it says, speaking of the Samaritan. And then, thirdly, the rule which is given to us for imitation,” when he says, Go and do likewise.” So, these are the three points. And so, the first point is the misery of sinners. And he talks about these different miseries. He says, “going down, the man went down from Jerusalem.” And so, Jerusalem represents, he says, “The glory of heaven.” And so, sin is going away from the glory of heaven. And he says, “he fell among thieves.” And the thieves represent those who are wicked, especially the wicked spirits, that by sin, we fall under the power of the evil spirits, especially when we give in to temptation. And then it says, “which stripped him of his garment.” And that’s how this sin and these spirits of evil rob the sinner of the spiritual graces that God has given us. “And then they beat him.” And by sin, we are wounded in our human nature. And St Augustine says “sins which but by which the integrity of human nature is violated.” They take away the integrity, the beauty, the virtue, the salvation, so the sin leaves us wounded by these robbers, by the spirits of evil. “The sinner is left half dead insofar as his soul is now dead, spiritually dead, having lost supernatural life,” having lost a state of grace, even if the body is still living. So, if a person is in mortal sin, the person is already half dead, because they still have physical life, but their soul does not have spiritual life. And he says, “the priest and the Levite represent the Old Testament, which could not save.”  So, that’s that this victim is represents those who have fallen into sin, which Is all of us. So, it’s inviting us to realize that all of us are in the situation of this victim who, because of our own sin and because of the attacks of evil, have been robbed, have been beaten. And then he speaks, the second point of Jesus as the Good Samaritan. And he speaks of the different ways this parable shows different ways in which Christ manifests His mercy. So, the Gospel says, “a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.” And so the Samaritan is also coming down from Jerusalem, and here it represents Jesus coming down from heaven and taking on our human nature. And as one of the Fathers of the Church said, “Jesus looked upon the human race, wounded and half dead, and seeing that there was nothing in man to merit salvation, and that man had done and could do nothing to deserve to be restored to grace, He was moved with compassion at the sight and desired to heal us. Not because of any preexisting good in ourselves, but from the abundance of His mercy and compassion.” And so what does he do? It says, “he bound up his wounds.” And St Thomas sees in this the institution of the sacraments for the salvation of sinners, like baptism, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Anointing of the Sick, and so forth, and pouring oil. And so, oil as a sign of the infusion of the Holy Spirit, the oil, the gentleness of God’s mercy that strengthens what is good. And then also the wine; oil and wine. Those were typical ways in antiquity in which they were typically used for healing. But here also, the wine is a symbol of the blood of Jesus, which washes away what is corrupted. And then it says, “he set him on his own beast.” So, what do you think that? What symbolism do they see in that, when the man sets the victim on his own beast, on his own, I guess a donkey or a horse. St. Thomas interprets this, “enduring the bitterness of his of Jesus, enduring the bitterness of His passion for sinners, the beast is His flesh, the flesh of Jesus, in which He places the wounded victim, because He bore our sins in His own body on the cross.” And so that’s Jesus bearing our sins. And then it says, “he took him to an inn and cared for him.” And so, what does the inn represent? It says, “the inn is the Church to whom Christ has entrusted all to whom He has forgiven.” And so, each one of us is in a situation of this victim. And Jesus is the Good Samaritan, the Lord of Mercy, who comes to us. And so then, when Jesus says, “Go and do likewise,” he’s giving us a call. So, we’re both the ones – so in this parable, we are both the victim who is, who Jesus treats with compassion and then calls us then to follow His own example, like the Good Samaritan. And St Thomas gives four ways to do this, by helping another person, and he quotes Galatians, “bear one another’s burdens.” And then secondly, he says, “By praying for them, “pray for one another, that ye may be healed,” as St James said. And that’s something that we can do right now during this Mass. And instructing them, sharing the faith with them. And then the fourth one he mentions is forgiving them. And that’s also something that we can do right during this Mass is an act of forgiveness; and we can do it, not only for people who are still on this earth, but we can also do this for the souls in purgatory. That’s what so many souls in purgatory are asking for when they manifest, is the prayer and especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And so right now, during this Mass, we have the opportunity to put this into practice. And just to conclude, St Paul in the passage that we heard from Colossians, says, “Christ, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, For in Him, all the fullness was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross.” And so, in this very Mass, Jesus comes to us as the Good Samaritan. We come at the very beginning of Mass, we recognize that we’re sinners, and right before Holy Communion, we say, again, “Lord, I’m not worthy to receive you.” We’re recognizing our sinfulness, but we’re asking Him to come to us as the Good Samaritan so that we can receive His mercy, His grace, His healing, and then that we can also go and follow His example. Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Luke 10:25-37
Colossians 1:1-15