You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself (Lk 10:27).

The Gospel reading for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Lk 10:25-37) contains the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus tells this powerful story to illustrate his response to a legal scholar’s question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk 10:25)

The simple, straightforward answer that Jesus gives is “love.” To gain the joy of heaven, we must love God absolutely, with every fabric of our being, and we must love our neighbor as ourselves, which means unselfishly, with a self-sacrificing love.

But what does Jesus mean when he tells us to love? As we know only too well, there are many different meanings that can be given to the word “love.” Which one applies to the two great commandments that have been given to us by our Lord?

St. Luke tells us that the scholar who confronted Jesus with this question about inheriting eternal life approved of the Lord’s answer. He knew that by proposing these two great commandments Jesus had summarized brilliantly the teaching of the Old Testament. The scholar’s correct, but somewhat condescending, response to Jesus was: “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live” (Lk 10:28).

But then the scholar asks, “Who is my neighbor?” (Lk 10:29) He wants Jesus to define who his neighbor is. Is it someone just like him? Or can a neighbor be someone outside his inner circle, a stranger? St. Luke tells us that the legal scholar is trying to “justify himself” (Lk 10:29) and to make sure that his understanding is correct. How this question is answered is important to him. He wants to know who his neighbor is because he wants to inherit eternal life.

The parable of the Good Samaritan answers both questions: What is love? And who is my neighbor?

The classic definition of Christian love is “to will the good of the other even at the expense of our own needs and desires.”

The parable of the Good Samaritan shows us what this kind of self-sacrificing love looks like. Whereas the story’s two traditionally righteous people, a priest and a Levite, ignore the man savagely beaten and lying in the road, a Samaritan who is a despised foreigner is moved with compassion, tends his wounds, and goes out of his way to help him by paying for his food and lodging at a nearby inn. Jesus is telling us that this is what he means by love—generous self-giving regardless of the inconvenience or cost.

And because the one who helps the wounded man is a stranger, indeed an enemy of the Jewish people, our Lord is telling us that our neighbor is anyone—everyone—whom we encounter day in and day out, but especially the poor and vulnerable among us. As Jesus sees things, who our “neighbor” is cannot be limited to our own race, gender, social class, political persuasion or any other restrictive category. Everyone is our neighbor. Everyone.

As a result, “loving our neighbor as ourselves” means doing what the Samaritan does in this parable. It means compassion for others, even strangers and enemies. It means going out of our way to help someone in need. It means sharing our gifts—time, talent and treasure. And, above all, it means setting aside our own wants and desires to concentrate on what is good for others.

Jesus makes it clear that the two commandments—to love God totally and to love our neighbor as ourself—are intimately related to one another. Our neighbor is lovable because he or she is made in the image and likeness of God, just as we ourselves are. We cannot love God and, at the same time, despise—or be indifferent to—someone who is made in God’s image. Our respect for the dignity of all human beings flows directly from our reverence for Almighty God. Our love for the Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is a participation in their Divine Love, which is the source and sustaining power of all God’s creation.

When we love unselfishly, we are most like the God in whose image we were created. And when we recognize and respect the fact that everyone we encounter is our neighbor, we can obey the two great commandments that Jesus has given us as a requirement for gaining eternal life with him.

As we continue the liturgical season of Ordinary Time, let’s take to heart the teaching and example of Jesus. He is the Good Samaritan who sacrificed himself for us and who asks us to do likewise for our neighbors. †