Who Is My Neighbor?

Sometimes people can get paralyzed by the complexity of all the teachings of the Catholic faith. However, all the law can be summed up by the same fundamental teaching that has been taught since the beginning of humanity: "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."
              But, as the Gospel story this Sunday relates, the scholar of the law is not satisfied with this simple answer. He wants to be able to "justify" himself. He wants to know that he is righteous. So, he asks, "who is my neighbor?" This question implies that some people are his neighbor and others are not.
However, Jesus keeps it simple. Your neighbor is your neighbor. Jesus tells him that his neighbor is literally the person or people that he runs into. It does not matter their race, ethnicity or creed. One's neighbor is the person that you encounter in life. Often we do not get to pick the people we encounter. However, Providence has guided us to encounter certain people at certain times in our lives. Those are the people God is calling us to love in the moment. We cannot think we are loving others but ignore those who are suffering right in front of us. God gives us neighbors, we run into others, precisely because we are called to love them. And if we love God and if we live with that simplicity of loving those we encounter, we shall experience Divine Life.
 
God bless,
Fr. Scott