Reflections on the Gospel readings for the 25th Sunday after Pentecost, the Feast of St. John Chrysostom, in the Holy Orthodox Church, Nov. 13, 7532 [Nov. 26, 2023 on the civil calendar]
Today’s Gospel reading from Luke 10 (see the full text below) tells of how our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ cited the Mosaic law to the interrogating lawyer, in noting the Great Commandments: That that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, our soul, our strength, and our mind, and love our neighbor as ourself. The Blessed Theophylact in his commentary on this passage says all our heart means with all our biological powers (akin he writes to vegetation); all our soul, our sensory powers (akin to animals); and all our mind, our intellectual powers (our distinctive gifts as human beings). With all our strength, Theophylact adds, means to pull — with all of those powers — our stubborn selves to God. Force yourself, as Bishop Luke of Syracuse put it recently. As the Gospel notes elsewhere, the violent take the kingdom of heaven by force (Matthew 11:12, Luke 16:16). This is part of the synergy between spiritual warfare (or ascetic struggle) and God’s grace, for our salvation, and for realizing the purpose of man in theosis, oneness with grace.
Theophylact also notes that Christ went beyond the law, in that He taught us to love our neighbor more than ourself. For He also said in the Gospels, “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). This relates to the other Gospel reading, from John 10 (also given in full at the end below), that the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. In knowing God in that intimate way as the Good Shepherd, Theophylact notes that first the Gospel says we must enter in — in effect into loving God again with all our strength, dynamis, and with all our biological, sensory, and intellectual powers. But for all this to happen, Theophylact explains, “It is impossible to know God unless we are known by Him. Christ first united Himself to us in the flesh when He became man, only then could we become united to Him by grace and become God-like by theosis.” In all this, note too how love is a key term, for we are told elsewhere by the Evangelist John that “God is love,” and we are given the ultimate example and mystery of the love of the Trinity in the relation of Three Persons Who are One in Essence. Also our Lord gave us the image of the Bride and the Bridegroom for the relationship of God and His Church, the full realization of Israel of the Old Testament in the New. In the Apostle Paul’s famous chapter on love (I Cor. 13), he writes, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
All this relates to the account of the Good Samaritan, which is about love. The Church has depicted Jesus Christ iconographically as the Good Samaritan. For as the Good Shepherd he takes care of us when we are fallen, when we are targeted by demonic foes and sins that may be our own, or unfairly by others in human fallenness. He binds up our wounds. Yet significantly the framework of the account involves the opening question by the lawyer, And who is my neighbor? At the end of telling about the Good Samaritan’s care for the injured many on the road, Jesus asks the lawyer which of the three who had gone by was the neighbor? The man says he that showed mercy. Jesus says, go and do likewise. The Greek word for neighbor here has the meaning of “he who is close by,” “one who is nigh or near.” We all share a human nature that makes us nigh or close, Theophylact says (and just so also Christ Himself is always nigh or close to us, of course, as God). Theophylact adds that it expressed our human nature that the man was going from Jerusalem, its name symbolizing peace, to Jericho, a place low-lying and suffocating with heat, symbolizing passions. A man fell among thieves, that is among demons. Stripped of virtues and wounded by sin, he appears abandoned. The priest and the Levite symbolizing the law and the prophets pass by, as if into the past of the Old Testament, unable to help him. But the oil and the wine given the wounded man by the Good Samaritan remind us of the oil of chrismation and the blood of Christ in the Eucharist. The Innkeeper is the type of those pastors in the Church, the inn, who care for those wounded with two pence from our Lord, the two testaments Old and New, showing the fullness of the Church and its welcoming to all, Jew, Gentle, or Samaritan. So Theophylact helps us to understand all these symbolic readings in the account of the historical telling of this story by Jesus Christ.
Finally, there is one other thing to mention here in this brief comment. We are told to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, mind. Then to love our neighbor as ourself. Who is the example of the neighbor? The Good Samaritan, who is a figure of Christ. We are all one in Christ, a spiritual unity worked out in the Church as the Body of Christ. Then to love our neighbor we might say is to love him or her as an icon of Christ. Then if we love our neighbor so, we love him as ourself, because we are loving Christ, God, with all our biological, sensory, and intellect powers, as Blessed Theophylact put it. This is the mystery of sobornost, that deeper sense of catholicity as not just universality but solidarity, as given us by Orthodox Christianity.
May we emulate the Good Samaritan and Good Shepherd, Christ, in Whom we lose ourself in love to find ourself.
Glory to God for all things!
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The Reading from the
Holy Gospel according to Luke,
§53 [10:25-37]
At that time, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, ‘Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said unto him, ‘What is written in the law? How readest thou?’ And he answering said, ‘‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself.’’ And He said unto him, ‘Thou hast answered right; this do, and thou shalt live.’ But he, wanting to justify himself, said unto Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ And Jesus answering said, ‘A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his raiment and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was. And when he saw him he had compassion on him, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host and said unto him, ‘Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee.’ Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?’ And he said, ‘He that showed mercy on him.’ Then said Jesus unto him, ‘Go and do thou likewise.’
Holy Gospel according to John,
§36 [10: 9-16]
The Lord said to the Jews who came to Him: ‘I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he who is a hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down My life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold, and one Shepherd.’