NOTES for Luk 10:25-37

Many people, reflecting on today's passage from the Gospel in which the Lord answers our question about who our neighbor is, have reached the following conclusion. Since our neighbor is not necessarily someone close to us in outlook or someone who lives nearby—in short, since our neighbor may be a person entirely unknown and alien to us—then all people are brothers and the whole human world consists of our neighbors. This thought filled them with love for all humanity, a love so powerful that they staged revolutions in the name of universal justice, which everywhere and without exception turned into bloodbaths. But this is not what the Lord is speaking about. The Lord says that your neighbor is the person who needs your help here and now. Often, seized by a pious impulse, people call strangers their neighbors while regarding members of their own family who, for some reason, do not accept their faith as enemies, relying on the words: “a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.” Yet our loved ones who do not accept the faith are precisely our true neighbors, closer than anyone else. For they need our help, just as every unbeliever needs the help of a believer. And who else can give it to them but us?