The story has not changed much today. The deep antagonism and the hatred between people who hail from the state of Israel and those who come from the West Bank who are Palestinian is still very much in evidence today. This is the incredible and life changing teaching of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The people who belonged to the same race and culture as the wounded man refused to stop and help him. However, the one who was considered to be the enemy provided what was necessary for him. The one branded as the enemy proved to be his source of salvation and life.
This story is still happening today. Last May, during the meeting of the Australian Bishops in Sydney, we had a visitor from Israel. His name is Archbishop Elias Chakour. Archbishop Chakour was born in 1939 in Birani in Galilee; which is in the north of what is now known as the land of Israel. When he was eight years old, he and his family were evicted by the Israeli government from their own home. In 1948, when Israel was officially proclaimed as a nation, he was granted an Israeli passport although he was a Palestinian. In 1965, as a priest he was assigned to a place called Ibillin and after six years he founded the Mar Elias Schools. These unique schools are open to Christians, Druze and Muslin children and at the present time they provide education for about five thousand children of all faiths.
Archbishop Chakour often travels around the world to share his experience in the cause of peace for his country. His message is one of love and friendship. He is very upfront in saying that he is working for the civil rights of Palestinians, but not if it means hating the Jewish people. His basic principle is that for centuries Jews and Arabs lived together and they are blood brothers. He would often repeat that he is a Palestinian Arab Christian who is also a citizen of the State of Israel. He would admit that these four facets of his identity are not always at peace together because they are an apparent contradiction. However, as a believer in Jesus Christ, he firmly believes that Christianity is a great means to bring forward an alternative solution to the pervading culture of death in the Middle East. He would maintain that the church will never go into any trench to fight for one against the other. As a church, we will stay between the trenchers and beg both sides to stop killing each other and to learn how to belong together to that land. This is a very precarious mission indeed and coming from a person who could have nursed sentiments of hatred and revenge because of the injustice inflicted upon him and his family.
We are called, likewise to be instruments of peace where there is hatred. We are called to bring and preserve sound solutions when difficulties arise. Difficult times reveal our character and reveal who we are. Providing sound and long lasting alternatives are not achieved by doing a few great deeds but they are the fruit of a lot of little deeds. Great things are not done by impulses or on the spur of the moment, but are a series of little things put together. The more we are prepared every day to hit back with compassion in the face of misunderstanding, with forgiveness and seeking the truth in the face of injustice, with perseverance when everything seems to be shutting down around us and with commitment to what we believe as Catholics in the face of so much lack of belief and a subjective way of living, the more we become instruments of achieving life – changing situations in the lives of so many.
Being a good Samaritan becomes our natural way of acting and behaving. It becomes our habit, an innate attitude. A loving parent develops a natural instinct for doing good to his or her children. A loving parent does not need to go to school to learn how to love and do whatever is necessary for the welfare of the family. This comes naturally. In the same way, as we daily give time to a close and personal relationship with our God in prayer and as we continuously get nourished especially by the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we instinctively become more and more a source of constant blessing and goodness to ourselves and to others.
This is what Mother Teresa has to say about this. “We must not think that our love has to be extraordinary. But we do need to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. These things are like the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought fro others, our way of being quiet, of looking, of speaking and of acting. These are the true drops of love that keep our lives and relationships burning like a lively flame”.
God Bless.
