The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) was Jesus’ answer to a disingenuous question from “a certain lawyer,” i.e., an expert in the Pharisaical interpretation of the Torah. The question was “Who is my neighbor?” It was insincere because the Pharisee asking it was seeking “to justify himself” after failing in his attempt to confound Jesus with his question, “What must I do to possess eternal life?”
Because it was a practical answer to a specific question ending with the straightforward advice, “Go, and do thou in like manner,” the simple, literal sense of the parable (the story’s plot) is really sufficient to grasp the moral: If you show mercy to those you come across who need it, regardless of their identity, you are loving your neighbor as yourself. That is what the second great commandment demands, and that, along with the first, is how you will possess eternal life. A simple lesson.
Many of the Fathers of the Church (especially the Alexandrines) and later commentators building upon their work were not satisfied with the literal sense only; they saw that, in addition, there are also three spiritual or mystical senses — the allegorical, the tropological, and the anagogical — which, in the Middle Ages, were collectively known as the quadriga.
One has to be alert when speaking of the “literal sense” of a parable. The literal sense of the Bible is the immediate, face-value meaning of the text, and, of course, Holy Scripture’s historical narrations are true because Holy Writ is inerrant. The note of caution in the case of a parable is that it is a story being told for a tropological purpose, that is, to convey a moral lesson. Such stories were often fictitious, or at least fictionalized presentations of higher realities. But, according to many commentators (e.g., Cornelius à Lapide), the Parable of the Good Samaritan is something of an exception because it was likely a real event that Jesus’ audience knew well, and upon which He capitalized to make His point. According to à Lapide and his sources, including Saint Jerome, the place between Jericho and Jerusalem where the “certain man” fell among robbers was known for just that problem. The place was accordingly called Adummim, meaning red or bloody on account of the violent robberies that were commonplace there. (The relevant Wikipedia article does not verify all of this account, but it does validate the etymology of the place’s name and its association with our parable.)
Before I dig into the meat and potatoes of the allegorical sense of our parable, let me make one last introductory remark: Modern Biblical scholars often scoff at the spiritual senses, since these were not what the author really meant in the text. In this academic paper, for instance, we read, “Ever since the publication of Die Gleichnisreden Jesu by Adolf Jülicher in 1886, for many scholars Augustine’s allegorical exposition of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Quaestionum evangelicarum libri II 2.19 has been a classic example of how the parables of Jesus should not be interpreted.” How obnoxiously condescending! The quadriga was a beautiful unfolding of the Church’s ancient way of reading her own inspired Scriptures, and one praised by the magisterium. Without it, much of our liturgy would not make sense. We will not give it up simply because it has fallen out of fashion with perfidious academics.
Not being a perfidious academic, but a holy Doctor of the Church, Saint Bede the Venerable (735), treats the parable as what we might call “an allegory of the Church” (note the penultimate paragraph, which I have emboldened):
The man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho is Adam representing the human race. Jerusalem is the city of heavenly peace, of that happiness from which he has been separated by sin. The robbers are the devil and his angels, into whose hands Adam fell, because he went down. They stripped him and robbed him of the glory of immortality and the robe of innocence. The injuries they inflicted upon him are sins which, violating the integrity of human nature, let death in through half open wounds. They left him half dead because they deprived him of the blessedness of eternal life, although they could not abolish in him the faculty of reason by which he knew God. The priest and the Levite who saw the wounded man and passed by denote the priests and ministers of the Old Testament who could only show up the wounds of the sick world by the decrees of the law, but could not cure them because, as the apostle says, it was impossible for them to wash away sin with the blood of calves and lambs.
The good Samaritan (the word means guardian) is our Lord Himself. Having become man He is brought close to us by the great compassion He has shown towards us. The inn is the Church into which our Lord Himself brings man, as the good Samaritan brought in the wounded man on his beast, for no one can take part in the Church unless he is baptized, united to the Body of Christ, and carried like the lost sheep on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd.
The two pence are the two Testaments bearing the name and image of the eternal King. Christ is the fulfilment of the Law. The two coins were given the next day to the innkeeper, because on the morrow of His resurrection, our Lord opened the eyes of the two disciples of Emmaus and of His apostles, that they might understand the Holy Scriptures. For on that next day the innkeeper received the two pence as a reward for his care of the wounded man, because the Holy Ghost descending upon the Church, taught the apostles all truth, that they in their turn, might be able to teach all nations and preach the Gospel.
We can now supplement this marvelous interpretation with refinements from other Fathers and commentators.
Saint Bede, who often paraphrases Saint Augustine, was likely following the Doctor of Hippo in this ecclesiastical interpretation of the inn. Here is Saint Augustine:
He slighted us not: He healed us, He raised us upon His beast, upon His flesh; He led us to the inn, that is, the Church; He entrusted us to the host, that is, to the apostle; He gave two pence, whereby we might be healed, the love of God, and the love of our neighbour. (Exposition on the Psalms)
This allegorical reading of the inn as the Church is not just a “Latin interpretation,” either. The earlier Alexandrine ecclesiastical writer, Origen (253), used it when he favorably paraphrased an unnamed patristic thinker:
One of the elders wanted to interpret the parable as follows. The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord’s body, the pandochium (that is, the stable [the Greek word πανδοκεῖον is generally translated “inn”]), which accepts all who wish to enter, is the Church. And further, the two denarii mean the Father and the Son. The manager of the stable is the head of the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Savior’s second coming.
Saint Augustine’s Greek contemporary, Saint John Chrysostom (407), also has the inn being an allegory of the Church:
For the Inn is the Church, which receives travelers, who are tired with their journey through the world, and oppressed with the load of their sins; where the wearied traveler casting down the burden of his sins is relieved, and after being refreshed is restored with wholesome food. And this is what is here said, and took care of him. For without is every thing that is conflicting, hurtful and evil, while within the Inn is contained all rest and health. (As cited by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Catena Aurea)
A later Greek author frequently cited by both Saint Thomas Aquinas and Cornelius à Lapide, Theophylact of Ohrid (1107), agrees with Saint Augustine, who, as we saw, had written that the “beast” upon which the Good Samaritan put the fallen man was Christ’s flesh. No doubt inspired by Saint Paul (e.g., I Cor. 12:27), Theophylact appropriately gives this corporeal reference an ecclesiastical interpretation:
He placed us on His beast, that is, on His body. For He has made us His members, and partakers of His body. … But now in every nation he that fears the Lord is accepted by Him, who is willing to believe and to become part of the Church.
Saint Ambrose has it that the innkeeper represents apostolic men who are tasked with preaching the Gospel and baptizing:
Innkeepers are they to whom it was said: Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved (Mk. xvi. 15, 16): saved from death, saved from the wound inflicted by the robbers. Blessed is that innkeeper who can cure another’s wound.
Anni Maria Laato writes that “Augustine was influenced by Ambrose (Exp. Luc. 7.69–84), who in turn was influenced by Origen (Hom. Luc. 34)” in their interpretations of the Good Samaritan. That makes sense. If, as I earlier surmised, Saint Bede followed Saint Augustine, as was his wont, then we have a golden thread: Origen to Ambrose to Augustine to Bede — Alexandria to Milan to North Africa to the Kingdom of Northumbia in Merrie Olde England. How very Catholic!
If we are reading the Parable of the Good Samaritan as an allegory of the Church, we would expect to find some sacramental imagery in it, wouldn’t we? We have just seen Saint Ambrose connecting the innkeeper to baptism. Earlier, we read Saint Bede portraying the Good Shepherd’s putting the man on his beast (the body of Christ) as a figure of Baptism. Saint John Chrysostom has also told us that the innkeeper supplies his guests with “wholesome food,” words which, on the golden tongue of “the Eucharistic Doctor,” are likely a reference to the Blessed Sacrament. Here is that same doctor, cited by Saint Thomas Aquinas, speaking of the wine as the Precious Blood of Jesus, and the oil being “the anointing of chrism” — likely a reference to the sacrament of Confirmation (called “Chrismation” in the East), which employs that particular odoriferous unction, olive oil mixed with balsam:
Or, he poured in wine, that is, the blood of His passion, and oil, that is, the anointing of the chrism, that pardon might be granted by His blood, sanctification be conferred by the chrism. The wounded parts are bound up by the heavenly Physician, and containing a salve within themselves, are by the working of the remedy restored to their former soundness Having poured in wine and oil, he placed him upon His beast, as it follows, and placing him upon his beast, &c.
In the few passages that we have here examined, we have seen patristic and medieval authors writing from the third to the eighth centuries about the Parable of the Good Samaritan as an Allegory of Jesus Christ and His Church, complete with imagery of hierarchy and sacraments. Mind you, there are other allegorical readings that see other mysteries of the Faith in the various features of this sublime parable. That is to be expected. It would be impossible to plumb the depths of the wisdom of Jesus in His Parables, which are more multifaceted, more splendid, and more precious than any mere diamond.
A modern author who amplifies this reading to much greater lengths is Father Joseph Prachensky, S.J., whose exegesis of the Parable of the Good Samaritan runs from pages 15 to 59 of his book, Divine Parables Explained: or The Church of the Parables. Originally published in 1890, this is one of those treasures that our friends at Loreto Publications have brought back into print.
Part of our vocation as Catholics is to assist our neighbors into the Inn of the Church, where they may be nursed, fed, and otherwise brought to spiritual health. Let us recall that the Latin word for health, salus, is also the word for salvation — as in, extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
