2024 Fall Appeal: The Samaritan's Road

Maybe it wasn’t even a decision. Maybe in the heart of the Samaritan, who now we know as the Good Samaritan, there wasn’t that shifting, internal battleline of doing for oneself versus doing for others.

We don’t know what ran through his mind. We do know the outcome.

After others had passed by the man beaten, robbed and naked on the side of the road, it was he, the Samaritan, who stopped.

So, there is that first question addressed to each of us: do we stop, or do we go on?

But there is another question. And it relates to how we think of the road itself.

In the Samaritan’s time, you knew of people suffering through word-of-mouth or what you saw personally. And what you knew was confined to your community or on the roads leading to and from it.

Now, in the ping of an email or the ring of a phone, we can know of an earthquake in Haiti. We can know of children orphaned by war. We can know of hungry families we have never before laid eyes on.

We can know of so many things, of so many people robbed and naked and who are helpless.

And does this knowledge equate to being in the physical presence of one left by the road?

In today’s world, there are people who hear of misfortune just as we do, and many who could help. But couldn’t the Samaritan have said the same? His was the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. There were others on this road.

Few things are simple, and how and when we help others isn’t, either. Helping one person may preclude us from helping another. We may already be helping a parent; we may already be helping a child; we may already be helping a stranger to such an extent we cannot carry another.

But it is something to think about, to pray about – how we think of the Samaritan’s road.

As Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, we have done our best to respond to need as it is made known to us. For us, the road is awareness.

When we became aware of the privation and economic collapse in Haiti, we embarked upon job creation.

When we became aware of the destitution and ostracism experienced by families with special needs in Latin America, we started support groups and financial assistance and all manner of businesses.

When we learned of children who are deaf going without an education, we founded special schools both in America and now in Africa.

None of us can do everything. The Samaritan helped one, not a thousand. Yet still his example of doing unto others as he would have others do unto him rings down through the ages. He was on the road and responded on the road, but he is likewise in each of us when we respond to appeals for assistance – through whatever avenues those appeals might arrive.

You, through your support of the Sisters, are acting just as did the Good Samaritan. You are not physically beside that person in need, but you are just as much on that same road Jesus spoke about. Where others have continued on, you have stopped and given aid.

Because of this, there are children who are deaf enlightened to the world. There are boys and girls with disabilities no longer benighted but who wake each morning with joyful anticipation. There are men and women in Haiti, who’s daily tribulations are so removed from what we ourselves have experienced, but who now dare to think of a better life for their children.

Jesus doesn’t give us a postscript to his parable. We can assume the man beaten and robbed recovered. We can assume he again knew the sweetness of life. And we can assume his sense of overwhelming gratitude.

This same sense of gratitude is playing out around the world – because of you! Through your gifts, you are the Good Samaritan. You are the one lending your hand to our hands as we raise up those fallen by the road.

Please give as you can.

Sincerely,

Sister Kathleen Harmon, SNDdeN
Provincial