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15th
Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C
Terrnuova Hermitage
July 14, 2013
Slowing Down Makes All the
Difference
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P.
Amato
Hurrying and Caring
About
five years ago, Princeton University did a study on what they called “Good Samaritan”
responses.
The
University divided some students into three groups. Each group was told
to report to another building across the campus to take a test.
The
first group was told to get there immediately and they were called the “high
hurry” group. The second group was told to get there in fifteen minutes
and they were called the “middle hurry” group.
And
the third group was told to get there sometime that morning and they were
called the “no hurry” group. Without knowing it, the students had been
set up.
Along
the way, various individuals posed as persons in need. One was crying,
another pretended to be sick, and another had a flat tire.
Interestingly,
none of the students from the “high hurry” or “middle hurry” groups stopped to
help anyone. But every student from the “no hurry” group did stop.
This
and some other exercises led the Princeton study to conclude that as the hurry
in our lives increases, our caring decreases. This finding strikes me as
pretty accurate.
The Good Samaritan
That
study gives us a helpful angle for looking at today’s gospel passage.
The
gospel says that someone asks Jesus, “What do I have to do to inherit
eternal life?” Maybe this person is really asking: “What do I have
to do and what don’t I have to do?”
Jesus
ends up telling this man the parable of the Good Samaritan. What comes
across here are three levels of response to the man lying by the side of the
road: 1) seeing, 2) feeling, and 3) acting.
Seeing, Feeling, and Acting
All
three people who are walking on this road see the injured man lying there.
The first two, the priest and the Levite, just keep walking on.
They
see the man, but they know that they’ve got to get to the Temple to fulfill
their duties. Besides that, if they get near this man or touch him, the
religious law makes them ritually unclean and they will have to jump through
some inconvenient hoops to become ritually clean again.
So
the first two people see the man but don’t slow down to really see what has
happened or to help. Then the third man comes along, a Samaritan, and he
sees the injured man and stops.
As
the gospel says a little later on, the Samaritan feels compassion for the
beaten man. And with his compassion, he then acts and does what he can to
help.
So,
to go back to the Princeton study, it seems that we have to slow down enough to
see, to really see what is in front of us. For us, it could be a homeless
person at a traffic light, carrying a cardboard sign and asking for help.
Or
it could be a son or daughter who is upset about a relationship that has fallen
apart but is trying to hide it. We have to be slow enough to really see
what is before us.
And
then, if we allow ourselves to do that, we will probably feel compassion for
the person or persons who are hurting. And once again, if we are slow
enough, the feeling of compassion will move us to act – to do what I humanly
can to help.
So,
seeing leads to feeling and feeling leads to acting. But the linchpin in
all of this is that we are willing to slow it down, to live slowly and
attentively enough to really see and then to really feel the other person’s
plight and then to take time to help.
Essential Moral Issue
Jesus
apparently views this as an essential moral issue.
He
tells this story in answer to the question: “What do I have to do to inherit
eternal life?” And his answer is that we are to be neighbor to one
another.
Our
being neighbor shapes who we are as persons. And apparently it is in our
being neighbor that we become God-like, like God.
Seeing,
feeling, and acting, and slowing it down enough to do this – this is crucial.
Jesus is teaching here an essential moral issue or lifestyle for us.
