How to be a Neighbor.

Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

July 13, 2025



This is a story about a woman’s experience at a children’s hospital. She was asked by a teacher from her church to tutor a boy with some schoolwork while he was in the hospital. The woman didn’t realize until she got to the hospital that the boy was in a burn unit, in considerable pain and barely able to respond. She tried to tutor him, stumbling through the English lesson, ashamed at putting him through such a senseless exercise.

The next day, when she returned to the hospital, a nurse asked her, “What did you do to that boy?” Before she could finish apologizing, the nurse interrupted her: “You don’t understand. His entire attitude has changed. It’s as though he has decided to live.”

A few weeks later, the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until this young woman arrived. With joyful tears he explained, “They wouldn’t send a tutor to work on nouns and verbs with a dying boy, would they?”

In our gospel reading today, we have two very different approaches to what it means to be a neighbor. The scholar of the law was looking for a precise definition of whom he was required to love and to have concern for. His attitude is reflected in the story by the two religious figures who see the man lying in the ditch, but ignore him and keep going. For them, he was not a neighbor; he was a stranger. And so, they were under no obligation to help or to get involved.

The Samaritan, who was both a political and religious “stranger” or “enemy”—responds with compassion to the total stranger in the ditch. Seeing a common humanity with the unfortunate person, he doesn’t diminish the definition of neighbor; he expands it.

One of the ultimate questions of life is: why am I here? Why was I created? What is my purpose in life? Sometimes, as in the case of the woman tutoring the boy in the hospital, we don’t plan for it. Instead, it’s as if life itself questions us. Even if you do not understand, will you help? Even if you owe nothing to a person, or if someone is a complete stranger, will you help, will you get involved, will you get inconvenienced, will you not leave it up to someone else, will you do something?

The man beaten and lying in a ditch, and the young boy lying in the hospital: in both cases they have the good fortune of being helped by complete strangers. Try putting yourself into the story. The genuine human being is the one who shows compassion, the one who hears the cry of the poor and responds.

Or you might think of it this way: what if you were the beaten person lying in a ditch? How would you feel if no one cared, if no one stopped to help?

Well, sometimes the message of Jesus is perfectly clear. The point Jesus wants us to get from the story of the Good Samaritan is: go and do likewise! Be a neighbor!