7/14/2013 – 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time – The Good Samaritan – Luke 10:25-37

       It’s summer, and I know that a lot of families have been going on trips: getting away at the beach, or visiting family members or friends in different parts of the state or different parts of the country, even going to Disneyland or other fun trips.  Some of our youth have been on mission trips or off to camp or even off to Europe.  It is good to get away to rest and relax, to have a change of scenery, to learn something new, and perhaps in the process be able to come back with a renewed perspective on our lives.  Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to go on retreat to the Trappist Monastery of Gethsemani in Kentucky near the town of Bardstown. 

         The monastic life is a special vocation within our faith tradition. These monks follow the Rule of St Benedict, which was written way back in the 6^th century.  The monastery in Gethsemani was established way back in 1848.  In fact, Bardstown, Kentucky, the town near the monastery, was made a diocese in 1808 – the only diocese in the US older than Bardstown is Baltimore.  The Trappist monks are a part of the Cistersion monastic tradition which date back to the year 1098.  The monks explain that their lives consist of three main activities: prayer, work, and liturgical reading.  Regarding prayer, they prayer together the liturgy of the hours 7 times a day, beginning with 3:15 am.  At 5:45 am they have lauds, followed by mass.  The other prayer times are scattered throughout the day.  They follow the practice of praying constantly throughout the day.  The monks work in different functions in order to keep their abbey running, and also to make cheese, fruitcake and other items that help them earn a living.  They see their work as a continuation of their prayers.

         It is interesting how the world views religious vocations like this group of monks in Kentucky.  I had a friend tell me that she thought that the type of person who became a monk was someone who wanted to seal himself away from the outside work.  The monks follow their particular monastic vocation in order to make space for God in their lives in a special way, to filter out a lot of the external noise that makes up our world.  However, the monks see themselves as in service to the world and to the Church through their prayers and in their way of life.  They see themselves engaged with the world through their vocation, not trying to flee the world.  They explain that although they don’t visit the prisoner or the sick directly, they keep them always in their prayers and lift them up to the Lord. 

         I’ll be honest – I really needed this retreat this past week.  In fact, all of us priests are required to go on retreat once a year in order to reenergize ourselves and to spend a concentrated time in prayer and spiritual reflection.  All of us as Catholics are called to those disciplines that the monks are called to according to our proper vocation in life: to have our prayers, our work, and our spiritual formation be a part of our journey of faith and to nurture us in the way we proclaim God’s kingdom to the world. 

         The Gospel we hear today is the well-known story of the Good Samaritan.  Often, we emphasize the charitable work of the Samaritan in the story, of how he reaches out to the person in need while the Levite and the priest do not.  Yet, the story is also about how we see the reality of the world in our lives, about how we see God and the reality of the world interacting with our lives.  The Samaritan first had to recognize this injured man as his neighbor, to see him worthy of receiving his attention and help.  He had to look at the victim of this robbery in the Gospel out of the compassion and empathy that is cultivated through his life of faith.  And if we don’t cultivate our faith with prayer and spiritual formation, with the way we approach our work in the world, then we will not see the world through the lens of faith and we won’t see Christ in those we meet on our journey, in those who need our help and compassion. 
          In seeing the Gospel today, perhaps we need to remember that what we pride in giving to our loved ones and to God – our love, our trust, our fidelity – we do not create these things ourselves, nor are we to selfishly hold onto them.  Our love, our trust, our fidelity, our compassion – we receive them from the grace of our faith and we are called to pass them on to the world.  I saw this in the monks I visited in Kentucky last week.  And hopefully our neighbor will see this in us.