The innkeeper

"And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.'" (Lk 10:35)

So often, we hear Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan as a challenge to us to be generous in attitude towards others. Our neighbor is "the next person I meet who is in need," we are told, and since everyone is in need in some way, we are called to be loving and attentive towards all we meet. Furthermore, the courageous kindness of the despised Samaritan warns us against self-righteous pride, and against fear of human respect--what others will think of us--when our conscience calls us to do something awkward or uncomfortable for another.

There is of course nothing wrong with the reading sketched out above, and in it is much to commend it. However, we gain an interesting new perspective if we place ourselves in the role neither of the Samaritan nor of those who neglected the victim, but rather in that of the innkeeper. The Samaritan's saving intervention was a step both heroic and necessary, but now the beaten man's full recovery depends on the willing attentiveness of the man to whom the Samaritan entrusts his charge. Though paid a sum by the Samaritan, the innkeeper may well not have received enough to cover all the costs of caring for the convalescent--and besides, he is an innkeeper, not a nurse! There is indeed a danger that he will not cooperate with the Samaritan's plan, and a man's life hangs in the balance. Yet the Samaritan entrusts, and trusts. A perilous gamble, some might say ...

Perilous, indeed. For we are the innkeepers who, in spite of pledges of happiness, foretastes of glory from God Himself, are tempted to grumble: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen 4:9) The divine Samaritan, cast out by the world, has poured the balm of His blood onto the open sores and wounds of sin-burdened hearts. And then he commits the unthinkable: he commends the nurturing of these hearts, just beginning to heal, to frails followers, disciples of his who are far from perfect, innkeepers who know but poorly how to cultivate gently a reviving soul of a fellow wayfarer. A dramatic testimony of how much Jesus has enlisted us to bear his saving cross with him, by shouldering the care of those whom he has touched to heal!

Perhaps we will seldom or never in life have occasion to play the Good Samaritan himself, faced with a desperate cry for help from souls bruised by the cruelty and neglect of others. But we are always called to be the innkeeper, for we are daily met, whether we are aware of them or not, by souls "on the mend," or perhaps hanging in the balance. God always, at every moment, caresses the wounded with his healing touch, no matter how often they--we--push his hand away. May we pray for the grace and discernment to be innkeepers with humble and ready hearts, able to see always Lazarus at the gate, to stoop to him, to embrace him with the arms of the Divine Samaritan, we who are the very arms and hands of God on earth.