July 10, 2022 (Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

“Confessions of a Guilty and Beloved Bystander”

by Fr. Dominic DeLay, O.P.

[This is the text composed by the homilist prior to delivering the homily.]

The story of the Good Samaritan reminds me of the famously failed finale to my favorite sitcom, Seinfeld. This show about nothing mistakenly tried to be about something in its last episode, which found our solipsistic city dwellers tried in court for breaking a small town’s Good Samaritan law. They stood by and did nothing while a robbery took place—nothing except get out their video camera and make fun of the victim.

In court, victims of their previous pettiness come forward, one by one, to testify against them. The plaintiffs’ lawyer argues that Seinfeld and friends are guilty bystanders. But their lawyer counters that the phrase is innocent bystander not guilty bystander, so there is no such thing as a guilty bystander. It’s all very clever, just not very funny. It is revealing though. We’ve realized for nearly 200 episodes that these four are selfish and petty, but we hadn’t admitted to ourselves just how bad, and sometimes criminal, they are.

Maybe this finale is meant to put us fans on trial as well, for watching our own video of them, indulging and indulging in their pettiness, enabling them with our glee to continue their escapades for nine seasons. And many of us fans have kept their selfishness alive by re-watching their crimes for 25 more years.

I won’t give away the verdict of the trial, but anyone who knows these four characters in the slightest can presume that, whatever the judgment, they won’t learn anything or change. And whether they’re judged innocent bystanders or guilty ones, what about us? As we move through life, are there ways in which we’re guilty bystanders? Are there times when we could do something but fail to?

Today’s gospel story finds a scholar of the law putting Jesus on trial. Of course, Jesus reverses the game and puts him as well as us on trial. Yet the priest and Levite had good reasons not to stop and help. We may not sympathize with their presumed concerns of becoming ritually unclean if they came near the man and found out he was dead. But we can surmise other reasons for their hesitance: this road was so littered with violent thieves that it was known as The Bloody Way. The man on the ground might be part of a trap. The priest and Levite might even think this man was foolish to have traveled alone—he deserved what he got. Perhaps less convincing but closer to our own experience: they might have been expected elsewhere and thought someone else would help them.

At our Dominican province assembly last month, a psychologist spoke with us about another reason why we might hesitate to help: compassion fatigue. Compassion means to suffer with. Medical workers, especially during this pandemic, are especially prone to compassion fatigue, which is a repetitive taking on of others’ trauma so that we ourselves experience trauma. Symptoms of compassion fatigue can include irritability, isolating ourselves, difficulty concentrating, substance abuse, depression, excessive blaming of others, cynicism, apathy, not finding pleasure in things, problems with relationships, mental and physical exhaustion, poor sleep, headaches, and gastro-intestinal issues.

I imagine most of you have now diagnosed yourself with compassion fatigue, but whether or not your symptoms are from taking on others’ trauma, professional burnout, the pandemic, or any number of other things, one of the main treatments is self-compassion. Yes, love your neighbor, but love your neighbor as yourself. Don’t forget to direct compassion toward yourself by taking care of yourself with sleep, food, exercise, prayer, play, and time with friends.

There’s another reason we sometimes find ourselves standing by when others are in need. We feel we can’t make a difference, especially if the need is systemic. There isn’t just one person lying in the road. There are many. There are not only many people without homes. There are so very many without a country, needing to leave their own and too often not welcome anywhere else. How many of our brothers and sisters are isolated and further victimized by incarceration? How many of our neighbors are victims of violence, sometimes harmed by the very people who are supposed to protect them from harm? How many of our pregnant sisters do we leave to fend for themselves, giving them only desperate but simplistic slogans and deaf partisanship? How many of our neighbors are disenfranchised by voting laws or lies, or by the undue influence of money? In summary, it may feel to some of us as if our nation and its values are lying in the street half-dead. How can we possibly give aid? Like the scholar of the law in today’s story, we seek to justify ourselves with our well-reasoned excuses and distinctions. But what’s the alternative? Where would we start?

We might start simply by not being afraid to see, to see the truth of our neighbor or our nation in need. We can be so overwhelmed that we turn away. Or, if we don’t turn away, we gawk and squawk, fueled by Seinfeldian cynicism. Fed rather by hope, we can see and not turn away. In today’s gospel story, the Samaritan saw his neighbor—his enemy—in need and provided what he could. Very often the main thing needed is merely our steadfast attention. We can’t do everything, but we can pay attention.

The 20th century mystic and activist Thomas Merton, in his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, wrote a beautiful description of his experience one day of really, finally seeing his neighbor:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers…

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Yes, our neighbor is a sacrament of God. You are an icon of God. God is our neighbor. And God is neighbor to us. Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s compassion for each of us separately and all of us together. The Samaritan poured his wine onto his enemy’s wounds. Jesus continually pours out his own life as wine for our wounds. Merton continues his guilty bystander reflection:

“…it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed… But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”

What is this gift, and how can we obtain it? Where is it? This gift is the gift of neighborly compassion, and it is within each of us, where God has planted it. As Moses tells us today:

It is not too mysterious and remote for you. …No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.”

The word Jesus uses in today’s story that we translate as compassion comes from the word for womb or gut. We who have been born from the womb of God contain the very compassion of God in the deepest part of our bodies. We have only to let that divine compassion come forth.