Hey, Neighbor: Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025

                                                                 Hey, Neighbor:

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025 

July 13, 2025

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Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

 

This Gospel passage brings us directly to the center of Christian faith. We are faced with an uncomfortable question: Who is my neighbor? The answer is a hard one: The one who does mercy is the neighbor. We are told then to be like the Scribe who must totally orient his life around God’s commandments. We must place mercy at the very center of all that we do as disciples of Christ. To make sure we have free will, we are given the Mosaic passage so that we can make a life-giving choice, knowing that in our humanity, we do not always choose that which is right.

 

If we want to know what Jesus thinks about sin, this Gospel passage tells us precisely that he views sin as one’s fundamental attitude and the behaviors that follow from it. He roots sin squarely within the attitude of people. Sin is always in relational, and therefore, he asks, “Who is my neighbor?” The answer is given at the end of the parable: The one who does mercy. Who was neighbor to the man left beaten in a ditch? The foreigner. The Samaritan. Not the priest. Not the Levite, but the one who saw another person in distress and came to his assistance. He was the one who bothered to care. He was the one entered into the chaos of the beaten man and got him back onto his feet. The one who loves is the Samaritan; the ones who fail to love are sinners. The lesson of this passage is this: We are called to bother enough to care about the person who is suffering and experiencing one’s own chaos. 

 

Mercy means that we must strive enough to care, which means we must see the beaten man in the ditch, the ones in our lives who are suffering, the ones who we do not even see because we do not think they are our neighbors. This gets complicated because we are generous caring people and we do our best with those in our circles who are suffering. We donate money to institutions that do admirable work in helping the less fortunate know that they have opportunities available to them. We get into trouble when we begin to make sweeping judgments about people and groups of people without seeing their suffering and knowing what they are experiencing. It turns into social sins when we cast judgments onto categories of people, and we fail to see how they suffer. We can become like that priest and Levite who look the other way and keep walking. This is the reasons the passage from Moses is crucial.

 

We must discern each day which decisions gives life and which deprives life. Discernment is key for today’s world. There will be times when we get it right and times when we get it wrong. Sin has the propensity to harden our hearts, and we lose sight of the ways and the extent of our sinning. A cold heart, an uncaring heart, an attitude of indifference – this is where we sin. When our hearts are content, resting assured, complacent, we may need to be unsettled because it is the nature of sin to dull our senses and blind us. How does Jesus judge us? Christ virtuously judges the weak heart that strives, the one who tries to help another person, the one who sees the one who suffers and lends a hand. Christ demonstrably judges the strong person who does not even bother to care. 

 

Christ tells us to “Go and do likewise,” to be like the Samaritan, to see each person in a shared humanity, and to lend a hand, because there was a time we needed help from others. We are our best when our hearts get stirred out of compassion, and we choose to lessen the suffering of others and see each other as neighbor. Who is my neighbor? The one who gives mercy. Let’s be that neighbor.

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (Exodus 1) A new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
He said to his subjects, "Look how numerous and powerful the people of the children of Israel are growing, more so than we ourselves!

 

Tuesday: (Exodus 2) A certain man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, who conceived and bore a son. Seeing that he was a goodly child, she hid him for three months.

 

Wednesday: (Exodus 3) Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the LORD appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush.

 

Thursday: (Exodus 3) Moses, hearing the voice of the LORD from the burning bush, said to him, "When I go to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' if they ask me, 'What is his name?' what am I to tell them?" God replied, "I am who am."

 

Friday (Exodus 11) Although Moses and Aaron performed various wonders in Pharaoh's presence, the LORD made Pharaoh obstinate, and he would not let the children of Israel leave his land.

 

Saturday (Exodus 12) The time the children of Israel had stayed in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. At the end of four hundred and thirty years, all the hosts of the LORD left the land of Egypt on this very date. This was a night of vigil for the LORD, as he led them out of the land of Egypt

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Matthew 10) "Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one's enemies will be those of his household.

 

Tuesday: (Matthew 11) "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes.

 

Wednesday (Matthew 11) "I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.

 

Thursday (Matthew 11) Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.

 

Friday (Matthew 12) Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the sabbath."

 

Saturday (Matthew 12) The Pharisees went out and took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. When Jesus realized this, he withdrew from that place. Many people followed him, and he cured them all, but he warned them not to make him known.

 

Saints of the Week

 

July 13: Henry, king (972-1024) was a descendent of Charlemagne who became king of Germany and the Holy Roman Emperor. His wife had no offspring. He merged the church's affairs with the secular government and built the cathedral in the newly erected diocese of Bamberg. He was a just ruler who paid close attention to his prayer. 

 

July 14: Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) was the daughter of a Christian Algonquin mother and a non-Christian Mohawk chief. As a child, she contracted smallpox and was blinded and severely disfigured by it. She was baptized on Easter Sunday 1767 by Jesuit missionaries and was named after Catherine of Siena. She kept a strong devotion to the Eucharist and cared for the sick. She is named "the Lily of the Mohawks."

 

July 15: Bonaventure, bishop and Doctor (1221-1273) was given his name by Francis of Assisi to mean "Good Fortune" after he was cured of serious childhood illnesses. He joined the Franciscans at age 20 and studied at the University of Paris. Aquinas became his good friend. Bonaventure was appointed minister general of the Franciscans and was made a cardinal. He participated in the ecumenical council at Lyons to reunite the Greek and Latin rites. Aquinas died on the way to the council.

 

July 16: Our Lady of Mount Carmel is the patronal feast of the Carmelites. The day commemorates the day Simon Stock was given a brown scapular by Mary in 1251. In the 12th century, Western hermits settled on Mount Carmel overlooking the plain of Galilee just as Elijah did. These hermits built a chapel to Mary in the 13th century and began a life of solitary prayer.

 

July 18: Camillus de Lellis (1550-1614), began his youthful life as a soldier where he squandered away his father's inheritance through gambling. He was cared for by Capuchins, but was unable to join them because of a leg ailment. He cared for the sick in hospitals that were deplorable. He founded an order that would care for the sick and dying and for soldiers injured in combat.

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• July 13, 1556. Ignatius, gravely ill, handed over the daily governance of the Society to Juan de Polanco and Cristobal de Madrid. 
• July 14, 1523. Ignatius departs from Venice on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. 
• July 15, 1570. At Avila, St Teresa had a vision of Blessed Ignatius de Azevedo and his companions ascending to heaven. This occurred at the very time of their martyrdom. 
• July 16, 1766. The death of Giusuppe Castiglione, painter and missionary to China. They paid him a tribute and gave him a state funeral in Peking (Beijing). 
• July 17, 1581. Edmund Campion was arrested in England. 
• July 18, 1973. The death of Fr. Eugene P Murphy. Under his direction the Sacred Heart Hour, which was introduced by Saint Louis University in 1939 on its radio station [WEW], became a nationwide favorite. 
• July 19, 1767. At Naples, Prime Minister Tannic, deprived the Jesuits of the spiritual care of the prisoners, a ministry that they had nobly discharged for 158 years.