Pope, at audience, says personal encounters show who we are
May 28, 2025
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CWN Editor's Note: At his Wednesday public audience of May 28, Pope Leo XIV remarked that “life is made up of encounters, and in these encounters, we emerge for what we are.”
The Pope offered a meditation on the parable of the Good Samaritan, beginning with the observation that Jesus told the parable in response to a request to define what it meant to love one’s “neighbor.”
The word neighbor, the Pope said, “literally means ‘he who is near.’” We often encounter people unexpectedly, and the way we relate to people in these chance encounters reflects the level of our charity. Pope Leo suggested that the priest and the Levite who passed by the stricken man “are in a hurry to return home,” and their preoccupation with their own affairs makes them blind to the man’s needs.
“When will we too be capable of interrupting our journey and having compassion,” the Pope asked.
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