This Sunday’s Gospel is about the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite passed by the half dead man on the road.  They did not want to get involved.  They ignored the voice, the face of God in the beaten man.  They fled from God. 

You can flee from God, being Christian, being Catholic, being a priest, bishop, Pope– we all are able to flee from God. It is a daily temptation. To not listen to God, not listen to his voice, not hear in one’s heart his proposal, his invitation. The priest’s and the Levite’s effort to escape God were direct and born of a desire to not be bothered.

In contrast to these, one only had the capacity to understand the voice of God, one who habitually flees from God: a sinner, the Samaritan. This Samaritan is “far from God,” yet “he heard the voice of God and drew near.” He was not habituated to religious practices, to the moral life.  Even theologically he was wrong, because Samaritans worshiped God in a place where God did not wish to be worshiped. Despite all this, the Samaritan understood that God was calling him, and he did not flee.  His heart was open; he was human. And humanity drew him near to God. 

The important thing to do in our effort of salvation is to be attached to God Himself, not to the things of God or to good acts. The Samaritan let God write his life. He changed everything that night, because the Lord had drawn near in the person of this poor wounded man.

Do you have the capacity to find the Word of God in the story of each day? Or are your ideas the ones that you hold up, and you do not let the surprises of the Lord speak to you? I say to myself, and I say to you: Do we let God write our lives? Or do we want to do the writing ourselves?