Good Samaritan And Saint Francis Of Asissi

Today is the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. What a marvelous Saint he is.  Today’s gospel reading is the story about the good Samaritan taken from Luke 10: 25 – 37. For us to understand to connection between the two – the feast day of Saint Francis and the gospel, we need to look at who the Samaritans were.

The Samaritans were a group of people who lived not too far from Nazareth. About 700 years DC, the Assyrians came in and they captured the northern part of the Holy Land. They over-ran Samaria and captured most of their people, taking them as slaves, but those that remained began mixing slaves from other countries to be part of Samaria had become. So during the period of captivity by the Assyrians, Samaria became a mixture of different Jewish backgrounds. Now when the captivity ended and the Jews came back, they despised the Samaritans because they had inter-married and did not remain faithful to ‘true’ Jewish customs. The Jews considered them as heretics and unfaithful to their Jewish laws and traditions. This all happened 700 years before Jesus. So for 700 years, the Jews despised the Samaritans. They had nothing to do with them. So they must have been somewhat offended by Jesus’ story in which the good guy in the story was not the Jewish priest nor the Levite, but the Samaritan who reaches out to help the person in need. It is the good Samaritan who is identified in Jesus’ story as being the good neighbor. He was the one – not the Priest nor the Levite – who reaches out to the person in need.

Jesus always had a very unique way of bringing people to face their prejudices when he walked the earth. Bearing in mind the 700 years of history, this could easily have been one of those times that the Jews would have tried to capture Jesus and throw him off a cliff. After all, how could Jesus, a Jew, say a good thing about a Samaritan?

As practicing Catholics, as practicing Christians, this story challenges us to take a good look at our own lives to see if we too may have prejudices against others we may think we are better than – be it because we may be better off financially, we may have more prestige, or we consider ourselves superior to them. This story challenges us to see others not through the blindness of our prejudices, but through the eyes of Christ, recognizing the goodness in all.

Saint Francis of Assisi is most likely the most popular saint. He was born in Assisi in Umbria, Italy in 1182. He died in Assisi, October 3, 1226 and was canonized two years later. His father was a very rich cloth merchant, and so Francis grew up surrounded by luxury. In spite of it all, like the good Samaritan, Frances was always generous to the poor.

Frances recognized that there was an emptiness in him that at one time he thought could be filled by the glory of war. But it could not. As time went by, he became very much attracted to poverty whom he referred to as “Lady Poverty.” One day while he was riding on his horse, he unexpectedly drew near to a very repulsive looking leper. It would have been very easy to scorn him, but Francis did not. He fought the repulsion, came down from his horse, embraced the leper and gave him all that he had. Frances later gave away all that he had and started selling his father’s cloth to buy material to rebuild a church. He became the laughing stock of most in the town, but that did not stop him. In fact, other young wealthy men also gave away their riches to the poor and followed Frances. That was the beginning of the Franciscan order.

Francis had a very deep love for God and by extension, all of His creation. He often referred to the sun and the moon as “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon.” Like the good Samaritan, he saw all men as his brothers and sisters.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, may the love of God so consume us, that like St. Francis, we too may see all men as children of God, and by extension, our brothers, our sisters.  May we reach out to them with the Love of God made visible in Christ Jesus and so help heal this very broken world.