Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI
VaticanMedia
Castel Gandolfo (Agenzia Fides) – Today too, as in every age, humanity has to confront “the darkness of evil, suffering, poverty and the riddle of death.” And we can recognize and embrace the pain of the world not out of respect for abstract “duties of solidarity”, but if we experience being “healed and loved by Christ”. Only in this way we too can become “witnesses of his love and compassion in our world”. This was recalled today by Pope Leo XIV in the homily during the Eucharistic Liturgy he celebrated in the Pontifical Parish of Saint Thomas of Villanova in Castel Gandolfo, the town in the Castelli Romani area where he is spending a short holiday period.Pope Leo weaved his homily around the Parable of the Good Samaritan, recounted by Jesus in the passage from the Gospel according to Luke read during the Sunday Liturgy: the story of the wounded man lying on the roadside after being attacked by robbers, ignored by the priest and the Levite – who see him and pass by – and saved by the Samaritan, a foreigner considered a heretic, who instead “saw him and had compassion on him.”Retracing the Parable of Jesus, the Pontiff suggested the source from which the mystery of Christian compassion springs.”The Good Samaritan – Pope Leo emphasizes, ‘unlike the passers-by before him, looks at the wounded man. And “how we look at others is what counts, because it shows what is in our hearts: We can look and walk by, or we can look and be moved with compassion”.The first gaze that the parable of the Good Samaritan wants to speak to us about, the Pontiff continued, “is God’s way of seeing us, so that we in turn can learn how to see situations and people with his eyes, so full of love and compassion. The Good Samaritan is really a figure of Jesus, the eternal Son whom the Father sent into our history precisely because he regarded humanity with compassion and did not walk by”. For this reason, he “wanted to walk our same path and come down among us. In Jesus, the Good Samaritan, he came to heal our wounds and to pour out upon us the balm of his love and mercy”.And “If we realize deep down that Christ, the Good Samaritan, loves us and cares for us, we too will be moved to love in the same way and to become compassionate as he is. Once we are healed and loved by Christ, we too can become witnesses of his love and compassion in our world”.The the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Jericho, which is below sea level, travelled by the man attacked by robbers,—the Pontiff suggested—”is the road travelled by all those who descend into sin, suffering and poverty; it is the road travelled by all those weighed down by troubles or hurt by life. The road travelled by all who fall down, lose their bearings and hit rock bottom; and it is the road travelled by all those peoples that are stripped, robbed and pillaged, victims of tyrannical political systems, of an economy that forces them into poverty, and of wars that kill their dreams and their very lives”.”Sometimes, Pope Prevost continued, we are content at times merely to do our duty, or to regard as our neighbor only those who are part of our group, who think like us, who share our same nationality or religion; Jesus overturns this way of thinking by presenting us with a Samaritan, a foreigner or heretic, who acts as a neighbor to that wounded man. And he asks us to do the same.” He asks us to “look without walking by, halting the frantic pace of our lives, allowing the lives of others, whoever they may be, with their needs and troubles, to touch our heart. That is what makes us neighbors to one another, what generates true fraternity and breaks down walls and barriers. In the end, love prevails, and proves more powerful than evil and death”.After Mass, Pope Leo XIV walked to Piazza della Libertà for the Marian Angelus prayer, recited before a multitude of about two thousand people, crowded there since the morning. (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 13/7/2025)
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