Could countercultural solidarity with the poor have the power to change reality?
It takes an entire ecosystem of love to heal a broken world. The story of the Good Samaritan begins with a radical, immediate act of mercy on a dangerous road. But the journey didn’t end there; it required a handoff. The Innkeeper became the vital partner. In a world full of broken roads, discover how this biblical partnership rewrites the blueprint for modern charity, and find your place in the story.
The Parable
Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) is a tale about salvation, how to be a neighbor, and most of all, about love.
It’s also, as Pope Francis once wrote, a “story constantly retold” because it both inspires and challenges the cultural and social realities of every time and place. We retell it often at the organization I’m privileged to serve- Catholic Charities USA – as it’s a spiritual touchstone for our services and central to how we understand who we are and what we do.
To remind us of its significance for our ministry, an impressive icon of this parable is displayed outside our chapel’s entrance, directly across from our welcome desk. No one who visits or works with us can miss this visual retelling of the story in which the Good Samaritan, clad in purple and framed with a halo, is depicted as Jesus himself: a clear reminder of whose love is shared when we serve our neighbors.
In addition to the Good Samaritan, the tale’s cast of characters includes criminals, a wounded victim, indifferent passers-by, and a welcoming innkeeper. Pope Francis, in his encyclical Fratelli tutti, asks us: “Which of these persons do you identify with?”
At Catholic Charities, our answer is twofold: as individuals, we’re called to imitate the Good Samaritan; as an organization, we fulfill the innkeeper’s role.
And that is precisely what the innkeeper did. At the inn, the wounded traveller received shelter, safety, food, clothing, practical care, and the companionship and community required for healing – key elements of what the Church today calls “integral human development” – which Catholic Charities seeks to foster in all it does.
On his own, the Good Samaritan could offer only first aid to the person he encountered by the wayside. But Catholic Charities, with its resources, expertise, and professional staff, can offer comprehensive, long-term services to those encountered by today’s waysides because it is, like the inn of Jesus’ parable, an organization, and not just an individual.
To borrow Pope Benedict’s words from his 2005 encyclical, Deus caritas est (“God is Love”), Catholic Charities is an expression of “organized” love – just as essential and fundamental to the Church’s mission, he insisted, as are celebrating the sacraments and proclaiming the Word of God.
That’s a critical point, because people can think of Catholic Charities like they think of the Ronald McDonald House. While they might admire the Ronald McDonald House’s mission of helping families with sick children, they know that McDonald’s core business – selling fast food – wouldn’t be impacted if all the Ronald McDonald Houses closed tomorrow.
So too with the Catholic Church, some conclude: while they appreciate what Catholic Charities does, they assume that the Church’s core “business” would be just fine without it. But that’s a gross misunderstanding, according to Benedict. The “exercise of charity,” he stressed, is one of the Church’s “essential activities.”
Pope Leo XIV echoed that teaching in his recent apostolic exhortation Dilexi te (“I Have Loved You”) in which he described organizations like Catholic Charities as the “burning heart of the Church’s mission,” and challenged those who think that the Christian task is simply “to pray and teach sound doctrine.”
In that same document, Leo writes that it “is important for us to realize that the story of the Good Samaritan remains timely even today” and insists on the significance of “almsgiving” – the sharing of one’s resources to assist “those less fortunate” and ensure that no one is “lacking the necessities for a dignified life.”
The Good Samaritan serves as a model for almsgiving, as Jesus speaks of his offering the innkeeper two silver coins for his services – equivalent to two days’ wages – coupled with a promise of even more on a return trip. In a similar way, Catholic Charities is richly blessed by the generosity of donors who support our work and our clients.
Such almsgiving is an act of philanthropy (from phil-anthropia, Greek for “love of humanity”). Sadly, many today dismiss such philanthropy as foolish or wasteful. Almsgiving “is not looked upon favorably even among believers,” Leo lamented in Dilexi te. ”Not only is it rarely practiced,” he observed, “but it is even at times disparaged.”
But why is this so, even
amongst “believers”?
Some may conclude that the poor are “undeserving” or that poverty is simply a result of bad decisions. For them, Leo has stern words: those who claim poverty is a “choice” reveal “their own blindness and cruelty,” he writes, while dismissing the “specious view of meritocracy that sees only the successful as ‘deserving.’”
Some insist that it’s the government’s job, not theirs, to address poverty, and that it’s sufficient to teach the poor to work and trust that an unfettered free-market economy will solve the issue. Leo disagrees: “It is easy to perceive the worldliness of these positions, which would lead us to view reality through superficial lenses.”
Still others “dismiss and ridicule charitable works,” as Leo phrased it in Dilexi te, because they see them as inefficient. Encountering suffering in our path may elicit compassion and empathy, they concede, but such feelings only lead to wasteful giving that impedes our building an imagined utopia of tomorrow.
This utilitarian mindset is encountered today under the labels of “effective altruism” and “longtermerism” – philosophies widespread in well-funded tech circles. To adherents, the Good Samaritan’s being “moved with pity” by the suffering he encountered is bleeding-heart foolishness that clouds good judgment. Such calculated thinking reduces human beings to data points, and elevates metrics over mercy.
Analyzing human need through statistics alone ultimately renders suffering people disposable, overlooks the truth that Christ can be encountered in their faces, and is a building block for what Pope Francis called a “throwaway culture.” In Jesus’ parable, a priest and a levite concluded that a hurting person’s needs weren’t compelling enough for them to stop and help. There are plenty like them today.
That’s why, in Dilexi te, Pope Leo lambastes the “dominant culture” that “would have us abandon the poor to their fate and consider them unworthy of our attention,” and laments the “selfishness and indifference” of those who “ignore the poor and live as if they do not exist.”
In response, Leo calls Christians to a countercultural solidarity with the poor and pleads for a renewal of charity: “Charity has the power to change reality; it is a genuine force for change in history.” And that charity, he concludes, needs to be offered “with urgency.”
That’s precisely what Catholic Charities seeks to do, inspired by the story of the Good Samaritan and an innkeeper working together to show love and mercy to their neighbor. It’s an essential ministry of the Church, whose origins can be found where there was no room at an inn.
But today, organizations like Catholic Charities can say: there’s plenty of room at our inn now.
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About the Author
Scott Hurd, Vice President for Leadership Development and Catholic Identity at Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA, is one of the first two Social Innovator Fellows for the Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Center for Virtue Ethics, which is part of the Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good (ECG). He served alongside Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, Executive Director of Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN),.
The newly launched fellowship program is designed for nonprofit leaders who, within the context of their professional work, confront ethical challenges that involve the cultivation and expansion of love. The Love Ethic Social Innovator Fellowships provide funding for specific projects that allow these practitioners to put love-based ethics into action—generating outcomes that will inform, shape, and improve responses to pressing social, political, and moral challenges.
