It a particular privilege of Catholics to be able to take part in the celebration of Holy Mass.  Liturgy is part of the Catholic Tradition, but Tradition is not simply something preserved from of old and handed down to us.  The purpose of the all liturgy is to offer worship to almighty God, of course, but it is also to lead us into an experience of the divine.  The Eastern Orthodox Churches speak of the liturgy opening a window into heaven. God does not need our worship but we do need to worship Him.  As we do so in the liturgy of the church we are drawn into the Tradition and become part of it, because Tradition is a living thing, it is dynamic and we are both drawn into it and nourished by it, and then sent out from it, taking the experience back to our daily lives.

Jesus tells the parable (Luke 10: 23-37) about a man attacked, beaten and robbed on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.  The pity about such wonderfully dramatic stories is that we remember the names of the characters, or some part of the setting or the plot, but fail to learn, or forget the moral of the story.  We might try to justify any reluctance on our part to approach someone lying on the pavements of our cities because we might think they are more likely to be drunk, or on drugs than to have been attacked by robbers. 

No doubt the priest and the Levite in the parable would have justified not going to the assistance of the roadside victim on ritual grounds.  If they were going in the opposite direction, towards the Temple in Jerusalem to perform some liturgical function they could not have become contaminated with blood, but they are almost incidental to the story.  Remember that a Samaritan travelling in Judaea would have been very much out of place yet Jesus says this foreigner was ‘moved with compassion’ when he saw the man.  His compassion was at the level of a shared humanity - a recognition of a fellow human being in need and a willingness to offer comfort. 

Jesus tells us a story about compassion.  He often set his parables in situations familiar to his listeners.  The Jerusalem to Jericho road even today has some very desolate stretches where a mugging could easily be staged and there would have been an inn on that road, such as the one described,  but the characters in the story are fictitious.  They are used to illustrate a truth:  to take any person for granted, or ignore them, is to de-humanise them, to rob them of dignity, to ‘pass by on the other side’ like the priest or the Levite in this parable.

We are called to eternal life and to inherit that life we must love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind and our neighbour as ourselves.  Our neighbour can be a near relative or friend, or it can be someone from another culture or creed; it can be someone close at hand or someone in a distant continent.  Jesus calls us to Holy Mass to witness His sacrifice of Himself for us and glimpse the glory of heaven.  He tells this Gospel story to us in order to instruct us in how to live according to His ways and then He says  “Ite! Missa est! Go, and do the same yourselves!”

Fr Michael Kirkpatrick VF

APF Diocesan Director, Plymouth