Father Richard Cipolla
The Gospel for today is one of the most famous and most well known parables of Jesus: “the Good Samaritan”. We all know this story, know the outcome and Jesus’ words: “Go and do likewise”. The duty of a Catholic is not merely to other Catholics. That duty is based on the unbounded love of God for us and therefore demands that love in action even towards those whom we see as outside of our own boundaries of life and faith. It is significant that the first two who pass by the wounded and dying man on the side of the road, who was a Jew, were the priest and the Levite: the priest who offered the sacrifices in the Temple and the Levite who assisted in all of the functions in the Temple. Both religious leaders. They ignore the man wounded man at the side of the road, the priest, lest he be defiled by the man’s blood, the Levite because he had things to do in the Temple. It was a Samaritan--and remember who the Samaritans were, descendants of the Jews but who practiced a form of Judaism that did not conform to the Judaism of those who worshipped at the Temple in Jerusalem. So it is this--shall we say-- heretic, who sees this man bleeding on the side of the road and ministers to him, and brings him to an inn for recovery and pays the owner of the inn enough money to keep the wounded man until he recovers. The parable is famous and powerful and should make us every time we hear it look at ourselves and question whether our Catholic faith is merely a tribal matter or rather the basis of our understanding of our moral duty to minister to those we see as outside of our chosen circle.
I remember vividly when I was a child growing up in intensely Catholic Providence, Rhode Island, going to the feste, the feasts that were celebrated by Catholics in not only Providence but also in the small towns surrounding, brought to this country by Italians who celebrated these feasts in their small towns in Italy. That we went to the feasts every year was not normal in a real sense for us, for we were that small but ardent group of Protestant Italians for whom the Catholic Church was akin to the harlot of Babylon. But we went to these feasts after assuring ourselves that we believed in none of this nonsense and that we went just as a cultural Italian experience. And one of these annual feasts was on August 16, the feast of St. Roch who was from southern France, but became a saint during his time in Italy and who has come down to us today as San Rocco.
San Rocco was born in Montpellier in the fourteenth century in the south of France. He was born with a red birthmark on his chest that resembled a cross. As a young man he gave all his money and belongings to the poor and set out as a pilgrim to Rome. There he found himself in the midst of one of the terrible plagues that assaulted southern Europe in that century. And he realized that his mission was to minister to the victims of the plague in the many towns he went through. And so he did, imitating not only the Good Samaritan, but acting out his faith in Jesus Christ in his care of those not merely sick but dying in agony. He was struck by the plague himself and lest he infect others went into the woods to die. As he lay there he was ministered to by a dog, a dog who would bring pieces of bread from his master’s table to feed San Rocco until he recovered. When he returned to Montpellier he was not recognized because of the radical change in his appearance. He was thrown into prison as a spy and died there in 1327. Only after his death was he identified by the cross on his birthmark on his chest. And as one biographer says: “The city that had imprisoned him now claimed him as his patron.”
And so I remember the great procession at his feast, the statue of San Rocco with the sore on his leg and the dog at his feet, with the singing and the clouds of incense, the fried dough and the eggplant caponata and the frozen ice cream with three bands of color and the wooden spoon frozen onto the ice cream which defied becoming dis-attached, and the unassuming happiness of the whole event that was so foreign to my cold Protestant version of the Christian faith, a happiness that I was to know myself many years later as a Catholic priest.
But today is also the second day in the Octave of the feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, the greatest of the Marian feasts. We cannot imagine the intensity of the joy of Mary as she joined her Son, not as a disembodied soul, but in her very body and soul, as the first fruit of the Resurrection of her Son. People tell me that they have a hard time understanding the Assumption. I tell them: take a trip to Venice, and go to the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, and there, stand in front of the great altar piece over the high altar, and gaze at this truly remarkable painting by Titian that captures in paint what cannot be captured in words spoken or written. And it is there in that beauty of an impossible event that you will understand how the Good Samaritan and San Rocco and the crucifix over the altar proclaim the definition of beauty that is the Catholic faith.
