THE SAMARITAN

We reread the parable of the Good Samaritan through the experience of Francis of Assisi. At a certain point in his life, as is known, he felt that Someone preceded him, loved him, led him, and inspired him… but he did not know who it was. What to do? Francis then confronts his highest ideals, those of chivalry. He must become a knight. But when an inner Voice makes him understand that the master is more important than the servant, he abandons his dreams and returns defeated to his homeland. However, the Spirit is moving him from within. And where does it lead him? Francis himself tells us this in his Testament:

The Lord granted me, Brother Francis, to begin to do penance, because being in sin, it seemed too bitter to see lepers; and the Lord himself led me among them, and I showed mercy to them.

Francis is led by the Lord among the lepers, but in front of that horrifying spectacle he initially runs away. It is a horrible vision. But, at that moment, he also understands that running away from the lepers, passing by, is the most terrible of defeats. And one day he succeeds: he gets off his horse and reverently kisses the hand of one of them. Now, this is a first step, a very important one. As long as what appears, leprosy, wins in Francis, he has neither the courage nor the strength to approach the sick and marginalized man. Indeed, he judges him and pushes him away even further. When instead he agrees to meet him, when he stops by him, he mysteriously enters into the hidden truth of that man and comes to an incredible discovery: the leper is Jesus himself, and therefore a brother, a Christian brother.

Francis then intuits another fundamental thing, and it is this: it is not enough to give something to others, but we must give ourselves, starting from the heart. Francis loves that man, begins to love him and for this reason he embraces him and kisses him. He welcomes him as he is and generates him in Christ. Francis now sees with the eye of faith and while, in a state of happiness, he gets back on his horse, turning back he no longer sees the leper. What happened? Why does he no longer see him? He does not see him because around him there are no lepers, but only Christian brothers. Francis, according to a beautiful image by Nicos Kasantzakis, thus begins to transubstantiate the world and to recompose it in the harmony of the first Love of the Father, Jesus Christ.

Having discovered the notes of this song, he composes a melody, a hymn to Him who has become the one and only love of his existence. Francis understood that man, even the leper, the one we find abandoned along the paths of life, is the veiled Christ, and that to recognize him an act of love is needed. Only love works the miracle: that disfigured face becomes a transfigured face. But that is not all. The leper, according to Franciscan biographers, returns Francis with a kiss. In this way he shares with him, in some ways, the fruit of those stigmata of suffering that configure him to the Crucifix. It is Easter, a salvific event that sees the appearance of the new man. Celano comments: Francis “similar to a river of paradise (…) has spread with loving care the waters of the Gospel throughout the world and with his works has pointed out the way and the true doctrine of the Son of God. So that through him and his merit the world found a new youth, an unexpected exultation”.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey