Gospel (Lk 10,25-37) - At that time, a doctor of the Law stood up to test Jesus and asked: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?". Jesus said to him: «What is written in the Law? How do you read? He replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He said to him: «You answered well; do this and you will live." But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus: "And who is my neighbor?". Jesus continued: «A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who took everything away from him, beat him bloodyly and went away, leaving him half dead. By chance, a priest was going down that same road and, when he saw him, he passed by. Even a Levite, having arrived at that place, saw it and passed on. Instead a Samaritan, who was travelling, passing by him, saw and had compassion on him. He came near him, bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine; then he put him on his mount, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying: «Take care of him; whatever you spend in addition, I will pay you when I return." Which of these three do you think was a neighbor of the one who fell into the hands of the bandits?". He replied: "Who had compassion on him." Jesus said to him: "Go and do the same."

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

This parable is among the best known of the Gospel. The half-dead man left on the side of the road represents all the poor (individual people, and sometimes entire populations) still today removed and abandoned on the margins of life. Well, the Gospel teaches us to see that half-dead man, abandoned by everyone, as the Lord's brother and our friend. The Gospel, through the example of the Samaritan, a stranger to that half-dead man, urges us to discover not only the moral but also the profoundly human and religious value of universal brotherhood. It is about feeling that all the weak and the poor are members of God's family. We could say that they are our relatives, and we should treat them as such. There is in this attitude a radical unhinging that starts from God himself: he has chosen the poor as his favorite children, he listens to them, protects them and places them as intercessors for those who help them. Jesus himself identifies with them, as the Gospel of Matthew writes in the Last Judgment. There is then a sort of identification between the Samaritan and the half-dead man. The Samaritan is Jesus himself; it is he who from Jerusalem travels the roads that lead to the many Jerichos of this world. It is he who first stops and urges us to do the same. And every time we also stop, as the Samaritan did, next to the poor, we find ourselves face to face with Jesus, even if at the beginning he has the face of an abandoned man. If not before, certainly at the end of life, at the moment of judgement, we will see in the face of Jesus the features of that abandoned man we helped.