Who is My Neighbor?

"Who is my neighbor?" Luke 10:29

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” The scholar answered, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But he had a further question which we all need to ask ourself, he asked, “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus told him the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

The movie Elysium offers us a look at the year 2154, where the very wealthy live on a man-made very comfortable space habitat where any sickness can be healed by just entering into a Med-bay. The other people still inhabited a ruined and ravaged over populated earth. We may ask how can people live happily knowing there are others who live in poverty and despair? But that is exactly what is happening all around us. 

Just outside our gated subdivision, across the street, people live in shanties, have problems with water and electricity and deal with fires now and again because of overcrowding. Do I do anything about it? No, I have never set foot inside the area. I prefer to donate to foundations, or organizations or the parish who do the hard job of procuring the food, and distributing it, organizing tutors for the children, etc. 

But Mother Teresa was not like that. I listened to an interview she gave in Ireland a long time ago. She really got her hands “dirty”, one person at a time. She was able to wash the wounds oozing with pus because that person was Jesus. She was able to touch lepers because those poor souls were Jesus in disguise. She and her thousands of soldier nuns were able to hold the hands of the dying because they saw beyond the physical ravages of diseased bodies. 

Mother Teresa need not have asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” She knew.