Celebrate God’s love and mercy every day

Homily for July 10, 2016 (15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, C)
Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

43 years since the Supreme Court of the United States held in Roe v. Wade that women in our country had a constitutional right to have an abortion, the issue has continued to be a divisive one—in no small part because there have been some 58 million abortions since the Court’s decision and the choice to undergo the procedure can be deeply personal and often painful.  Some women feel as if they have no alternative.  Others accuse those who oppose abortion, including many people of faith, as caring more for unborn children but than for those who’ve already been born, especially if they’re poor. 

Enter Bella Women’s Health Care in Denver. The clinic was started by Dede Chism and Abby Sinnett, a mother and daughter who are both nurse practitioners; and its mission is fully aligned with Church teaching on the sacredness and inherent dignity of all human life from conception until natural death.  Their desire was to create a place where women of all ages could receive care not only for their bodies but also for their minds and spirits.  

Since opening a year-and-a-half ago, the clinic has seen some 1700 women and is planning on expanding later this year.  It provides a range of services from ob-gyn and prenatal care to treating infertility and menopause.  The clinic never turns anyone away because they can’t pay: over a third of their patients have little or no health insurance.  Dede Chism explained the mission of Bella Women’s Care this way:  “Honestly, we’re not trying to compete so much with Planned Parenthood as we are just trying to provide excellent care of all women.  This is what all of us deserve.”

Ms. Chism and her daughter remind us that being a Good Samaritan can take many forms, in no small part because we all have different gifts and live in different circumstances.  The commands to love God and our neighbors as ourselves are not, as Moses reminds the people of Israel in our first reading, too difficult or remote to understand.  However, as Jesus told the scholar of the law and all who heard their exchange, to love in our actions as well as our words demands that we have “some skin in the game.”  We have to be willing to get our hands dirty.

The Good Samaritan did that and more:  he risked ritual impurity (no small matter in the religious and social milieu of Jesus and his contemporaries) by approaching, touching and nursing a stranger who had been robbed, beaten and left for dead.  He gave him a ride to an inn, and then he nursed him some more and paid for his accommodations.  The man many of Jesus’ listeners would condemn or dismiss as a foreigner and a heretic understood the meaning of God’s law of love better than the priest and the Levite, those commonly assumed to be the most learned and righteous.

Jesus, whom St. Paul refers to in our second reading as “the image of the invisible God” and “the head of the body, the church,” calls us to make our lives as disciples and our mission as a community of faith tangible signs of God’s love and mercy.  There are many people throughout the world and in our own communities who have been beaten down in one way or another and left by the side of the road.  Do we see them as our neighbors?  More importantly, will we treat them as our neighbors?

Pope Francis has declared this a Year of Mercy.  But we can celebrate God’s love and mercy every day by extending those gifts to others.  +