FAQ

From a practical point of view, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the most important thing is the distinction between what the scribe, who asks Christ about eternal life, understands by the word "neighbor," and what the Lord Himself understands. The scribe, quite in the spirit of ordinary human thinking, considers a neighbor to be the person who stands in a certain relationship to us. He expects in response a word that would belong in the same category as the concepts of "relative, friend, neighbor, fellow countryman, coreligionist." The necessity of helping those who are near us is repeatedly spoken of in the Holy Scriptures of both the New and, especially, the Old Testament.

It must be said that the position of the Old Testament law on this issue is quite exalted; it requires doing good to everyone, from relatives to refugees, whom it calls strangers in our land. And yet, the Old Testament consciousness does not differ in this from the mindset of all people. It assumes the existence of ever-widening concentric circles of people who are located closer or further from oneself. In the proper sense of the word, a person, including an Old Testament person, considers relatives and friends as neighbors. We are ready to treat them with all goodwill, even with love. "Do not even the Gentiles do the same?" asks the Lord (Mat 5:47).

However, the Old Testament, compared to pagan beliefs and customs, significantly expands this circle. Not only relatives and neighbors, but also completely unknown fellow countrymen must be considered neighbors. Even a slave and a disenfranchised stranger are also human beings, therefore you must treat them humanely, that is, as your neighbors. Thus, the Old Testament brings the answer to the question: "who is my neighbor" to its limit: "any person who happens to be nearby."

The Lord, however, concludes the parable of the Good Samaritan with a counter-question to the scribe: "Which of these three proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers" (Luk 10:36). The Synodal translation in this verse is somewhat approximate. The Greek text contains not the verb "to be", but the verb "to become, to be born, to be made". The Lord is saying that you became a neighbor to a person because he is in need of your help.

It is not a matter of a relationship of closeness or kinship, but of a relationship of need for another person. Moreover, He emphatically reverses the concept: it is not that the one who fell among robbers became a neighbor to one of the three travelers — this would be quite in the spirit of the Old Testament; on the contrary, one of them became a neighbor to him. Thus, at the center of the circles defining the concept of "neighbor," the Lord places not you, but the other, the one who needs you. A neighbor, therefore, is not the one to whom you would like to give something. A neighbor is not even the one to whom you could give something. A neighbor is the one who needs you.

And here it is important to remember how the Apostle Paul calls those who have believed "fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (Eph 2:19). We become neighbors to God because we need Him. And He invites us to define a neighbor exactly as He Himself does, that is, to follow His path, to be like Him.