From the Gospel : stepping into vulnerability

Abstract

Fr. Carlo Calleja reflects on the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C. Challenging the familiar moralistic reading, he emphasizes the parable’s deeper allegorical meaning as a miniature of human redemption: the wounded man as fallen Adam, the priest and Levite as the powerless law and prophets, and the Samaritan as Christ who heals and entrusts humanity to the Church. Drawing on patristic exegesis, Jesuit theologian James Keenan, and Pope Francis’s Fratelli tutti, Calleja argues that the parable reveals God’s mercy and calls individuals and societal structures to embrace vulnerability rather than indifference, transforming the question from “Who is my neighbor?” to “To whom must I become a neighbor?”