The Victim

 Pope Francis gives us a pretty dismal picture in Chapter One of Fratelli tutti. In Chapter Two he offers us a familiar parable, that of the Good Samaritan. “A Stranger on the Road” is about a Jewish traveler on the road to Jericho, who gets mugged and left for dead. Jewish ritual leaders see him, look the other way and pass by. Along comes a despised Samaritan, a ‘mixed blood’ Jew who has intermarried with pagan heretics, and he stops and tends to the victim, all the while knowing full well that the victim probably hates him.

Aware that Francis has written this text for all the people of the world, we can only imagine its effect on peoples of other faiths who have never heard this parable before. Yet all of us know the Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But there’s the rub. Each of us has to decide whether to pass by or help what we see going on around us each day, says Francis. (#79) He wonders why “it took so long for the Church unequivocally to condemn slavery and various each day forms of violence.” He wonders why some Christians continue to “support varieties of narrow and violent nationalism, xenophobia and contempt, and even the mistreatment of those who are different.” (#86)

But for those of us who probe the Word, there is even more going on here. The ‘victim’ is humanity itself, wounded by the sin of the world and the violence of centuries. The Samaritan is another kind of ‘mixture:’ the One who has joined humanity to divinity in a union never to be broken. The beast of burden that carries the victim to the Inn is our humble humanity, the instrument of the world’s healing. The Inn is that beloved community, meant to be open to heal all the victims of the world. We’ve all been paid for with a precious coin. The beloved Samaritan has taken care of that. As Lent unfolds, this story leaves us with a knowing little smile. We know how the story ends. We know what happens to the victim.