Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
October 7, 2019
There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”
He answered, “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.”
And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.
“Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.
“He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
“The next day he took out two silver coins, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’
“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
He said, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
As my senior year at Notre Dame begins to unfold, I am blessed with the privilege of serving as a Resident Assistant in my on-campus home, Keenan Hall. In witnessing the joys and struggles of my fellow Knights, this ministry has awakened me to the reality of the Good Samaritan story from today’s gospel. The only uncertainty lies in which character I will choose to be each time the story unfolds in my life.
Despite my best intentions, I find that the role of the priest/Levite can be all too easy to slip into when my own agenda prioritizes itself over the needs of my brothers. Sometimes it’s much easier to plop my tray down at lunch among my upperclassman pals than to go strike up a conversation with the freshman sitting alone. At other moments, I fight the urge to simply shut my door to block out the needs of my residents so that I can steal some peace and quiet for myself.
But loving one’s neighbor is not supposed to be easy or convenient. It is meant to be a selfless sacrifice that recognizes the presence of Christ in all those around us. Each time we are willing to put our own lives on hold and step into the shoes of the merciful Samaritan, we may delay reaching the destination we had in mind, but we set our feet on the path to our ultimate destination: the kingdom of God.
I challenge each of us today to be conscious of our neighbors who lie on the road in our lives, in need of physical, emotional, or spiritual aid. Let us pray for the courage to answer God’s call to raise them up with love here on earth, so that one day we might all be raised together in eternal glory.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you showed your overwhelming mercy in the parable of the good Samaritan. May we also be granted this same generosity of spirit so that we can extend your grace to our brothers and sisters in need. We ask this in your most holy name. Amen.
Saint of the Day
The rosary has been a popular, Scripturally-based set of prayers invoking Mary's intercession since the Middle Ages. The most widely accepted legend of the rosary's origins holds that Mary appeared to Saint Dominic when he was struggling with preaching in the early 13th century and instructed him in this new prayer practice. In this apparition, Mary told him to encourage people to pray the rosary, and Dominic found subsequent great success in his preaching once he began spreading this devotion. Given that the earliest recording of this story dates from three hundred years after these events supposedly took place, the legend of Mary's appearance to Dominic is highly apocryphal. But it is true that the rosary grew in prominence in popular piety through the protection and support of Dominic and his Dominican friars.
Why is the rosary such a fitting Marian devotion? In its essence, the rosary is a marriage of scriptural meditation and formulaic, repetitive prayers, whose aim is to facilitate the prayer practitioner's contemplation of the events of Salvation history narrated in Scripture. The prayers and their accompanying "mysteries" allow those who pray them to meditate on the events of salvation history that occurred in Mary and Jesus' lives. This prayerful contemplation of God's actions imitates Mary's disposition of openness to God's will (Lk 1:38) and continual pondering of God's actions in her life (Lk 2:19). Thus, the rosary is the Marian devotion par excellence, as it aims to instill in the devotee the very disposition of the Marian figure he or she contemplates in prayer.
October 7th was chosen as the feast for celebrating Mary as Our Lady of the Rosary due to her intercession for the European naval forces in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Originally, Mary was honored today under the title "Our Lady of Victory," to celebrate the aid she gave to the European navy. For on the day of the battle, Pope Pius V called upon Christians all over Europe to pray the rosary in anticipation of the cataclysmic naval battle, asking for Mary’s intercession in battle. After the victory, the Pius V instituted a feast day to Our Lady of Victory, commemorating the power of the rosary in obtaining Mary's intercession. Three years later, the name of this feast was changed to Our Lady of the Rosary, and its presence in October led the entire month of October to be celebrated still by many Catholics as the month of the rosary.
Our Lady of Victory figures prominently in stained glass windows in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus. An entire side chapel in the Basilica features windows containing images of our Lady of Victory, the Battle of Lepanto, and her shrine in Paris. A famous Marian shrine in Paris, Notre-Dame des Victoires, is named after Our Lady of Victory. In 1832, an association of people began to gather at this Paris shrine to dedicate themselves to Mary through the reception of the Miraculous Medal and praying for the conversion of sinners. Miracles and great wonders occurred, and soon, tens of thousands people journeyed to the shrine. Eventually, the communities of prayer who gathered at the shrine evolved into the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The confraternity and the centrality of this popular Marian shrine in nineteenth-century France partially explains the prominence of Our Lady of Victory in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus: when Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., left France as a missionary priest with the Congregation of Holy Cross to found the University of Notre Dame in the nineteenth century, this devotion was at the height of its popularity.
Despite the rosary's mythical beginnings, and the spectacular origins of today's feast, the rosary's real power is not in the miracles worked through it, but in its gradual and gentle transformation of the hearts of those who pray it to model the obedient, courageous heart of Mary. And, finally, in its conversion of our vision to see God's saving work not as history locked in ancient texts, but as a palpable, tangible reality in our own lives, today.
Our Lady of the Rosary, you help us see the saving work of God in our own lives—pray for us!