Love Thy Neighbor

(10/15/09 - My Catholic column for Newman University newspaper The Vantage)

On Monday last week I was working the campus phone in the Telecommunications office when right before I had to go to class at 11 a.m. the phone began ringing off the hook by the family members of Sharon Neimann (Program Director of Newman University Nurse Anesthesia Program), whose granddaughter Aubrey was involved in an accident and was in critical condition in Lubbock, Texas. You may have read the Prayer Request e-mail from Ann Edwards later that afternoon.

One of the family members who called in told me that Aubrey “might not make it through the day.” Immediately my heart was pierced with sorrow for not only our faculty member whose family this little girl was, but especially for the parents of the small girl. I became horrified and tears welled up in my eyes by what I was told had happened to her.

As a parent of a 14 month little girl who can now scamper around the house and find potential danger, it frightened me to image that my wife and I could possibly experience such a tragedy. I had to try to get the mental images out of my head for my 11 a.m. bioethics class. Yet, as soon as class had finished at 11:50 I resolved to pray for the child, for the professor (who I don’t even know), and for the family. So I immediately went to the chapel for noon Mass, told Father Tatro to ask the congregation to pray for the people, and personally offered up my Mass and day’s works in honor of the child.

Seemingly providentially, the readings captured my spirit that day in context with what I was experiencing and praying about. The Old Testament reading (Jonah 1:1-2:2, 11) was the story of the prophet Jonah called to preach against the city of Nineveh. The man did not know the people, as they were Gentile “foreigners,” but for that very reason he had no concern for them and thus chose not to follow his calling and was caught aboard a ship “fleeing from the Lord.”

The Gospel reading (Lk 10:25-37) was the story of the scholar of the Mosaic Law who questioned Jesus about gaining eternal life, wherein they both narrow in on the heart of the Law: “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.” The scholar then poses the question, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus goes on to tell the story of the Good Samaritan, a half-Jew/half-Gentile, those despised by the Jews for their mutt-like religiosity, so to speak. Yet, Jesus makes the Samaritan the good guy, who came upon and cared for a Jew who was beaten by robbers and left for dead. The Samaritan, unlike those Jesus clearly contrasted in the story, was willing to have concern for another, not because of who he was, but merely because he “was moved with compassion.”

The messages of the both stories were clear to me: care enough for others, even those you do not know. Jonah should have cared enough for the Ninevites – to love his neighbors – to desire to preach against their sins with the hope for their conversion and salvation. The Samaritan fulfilled this calling. The point is famous and clear: we are all neighbors. We are to care for one another due to our mutual inherent dignity and value.

Yet, there are various ways we are called to care for one another, both physically and spiritually. Last Monday I felt as though the Gospel spoke to me as I “was moved with compassion” for the family of our faculty member and thought to lift the child and family up in prayer. Yet, there are still moments when I find myself being critical or less than compassionate toward some, even though I may intellectually appreciate the problem and effects of sin in the world. And thus I recognize my continued need to foster concern for all my neighbors and call everyone else to also foster their concern for other.

In the end, if we all fostered such concern in our minds and hearts, even to the point of being able to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44), a HIGH calling, the world would be in a much better state. To love our neighbors fosters healthy communities and on a grand scale healthy nations. To love enemies dissolves war, even if it’s unto martyrdom. Yet, even the early Christian martyrs converted Rome, as Tertullian prophesies, “The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.” Let us care not just for family and friends, but reach out all the more to our neighbors, even those we do not know.