When we read the story of the Samaritan in the Gospel, we’ve been primed to think from the viewpoint of the Samaritan, as Fr. Chuck did in his thought-provoking homily last Sunday. Yet a book I was recently reading by Padraig O’Tuama invited me to be the person beside the road. What if I were a Galilean? And the ones who jumped and beat me were from Judea, would I hold a grudge and hate for Judeans who did this horrible thing to me? After all, the law then was “an eye for an eye.” When I regained my strength, would I inflict my trauma back on the Judeans, in the way a Judean had hurt me?

Modern psychology tells us that unresolved trauma gets taken out on others. In war, we don’t kill another human, a sibling who God loves as much as us, but we kill a less than human, an “enemy.”

The one we try to follow, Jesus, came with a path that lets go of the trauma—a path of forgiveness. Speaking of his persecutors while on the cross he said, “Abba, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”

Forgiving allows us to let go of the pain and trauma of the wound. We won’t forget the acts that hurt us—just the feelings we hold on to about how we have been wronged.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was very angry when he was young—a man who, like Saul, fought those who oppressed him and his Black siblings. He could only lose his anger and establish healing by establishing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after spending 27 years in prison.

So I have to ask myself, “If I lived in Palestine now, would I be open to seeing a Jewish person as a wounded person like me, someone who inflicts their inherited wounds on me? If I were Jewish, would I be able to see Palestinians as people who come from the same Creator rather than Gentiles who have persecuted my ancestors? Can each side live in the now, by letting go of the past, to see common humanity, to see a way forward from their mutual violent acts?

For that we pray. We pray that grace will flow onto the Holy Land and its people. That a spiritual and cultural roadmap will emerge to lead to peace in a troubled land. We ask this in the name of the loving Mother of the whole human family, and the whole universe. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, who with the Spirit, is with us today as the Christ. We pray together: Amen.