a good samaritan law?

While on vacation, we were invited to eat at a parish convent where the parish cook prepared dinner for us. The food was served individually and it was delicious but it was just too big for a filipino stomach. Growing up in the seminary can make one’s stomach smaller than normal and it seems to me that this deprivation may have contributed to the steep rise of overweight priests once they become priests. Anyway, with such a large serving I asked the cook if I could keep the remaining food on my plate in the refrigerator so that I could eat it for breakfast. The answer was a definite no. If you cannot finish it, then throw it in the garbage bin. But there are still large portions left, surely I can save this for breakfast. But the cook won’t budge saying, if something happens to your stomach tomorrow for eating those leftovers, I could be sued in court. Perplexing reply. So out it goes into the trash can.
A car met an accident and the driver of the car was pinned down by the steering wheel. A passing car stopped and pulled the man out of the car thinking that the car might burst into flames and kill the driver. The driver was hospitalized and his life was saved. But he was left paralyzed. So what did he do? He sued in court the man who rescued his life from the car for having caused his paralysis.


TBecause of this kind of interpretation of the law, western societies feared that nobody would stop to help a person in need. So they made another law which they called the Good Samaritan law. It is a law which obliges a person to help another person in an emergency or in a situation of critical need. The law stipulates that if you would not help the person in need you can be brought to court. So they have two seemingly conflicting laws - you can get sued for helping and you can also get sued for not helping.
This is what you get when you have an unhealthy preoccupation with the law - it can make one so wasteful as to throw good food away, it can become so cruel as to punish even the hero, and it forces us to do good something we would have done spontaneously in the first place. Things can be confusing when we rely too much on the letter of the law and leave to the congress of the Philippines or to any lawmaker for that matter to distinguish for us what is right and what is wrong.
Today we are invited to use a human faculty many people seldom use nowadays. This human facility does not need to be paid a salary and does not need a pork barrel. It is called conscience. Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed" Through the exercise of our conscience we distinguish right from wrong, good from bad. Through the exercise of our conscience we refrain from doing what is bad and we take pains to do what is good. Through the exercise of our conscience we can examine our actions - we regret and make amends for the wrong we have done, and we commend ourselves for the good we made. And through conscience we make proper choices when we act even when the consequences of our actions lead to our loss.
This is what Jesus is showing us today when he allowed his disciples to do what is not permitted in the sabbath by the letter of the law. Jesus was exercising his conscience. The law says no work, no harvesting, no picking up of grains. But the conscience of Jesus considered not just the law but also the situation at hand - and the situation at hand when properly discerned by conscience can be greater than the law, the need of a human person when discerned through conscience can be greater than the rules we humans make.
Today let us take pains in developing and exercising our conscience in making decisions, in making choices. The law may be a guide that will help us choose rightly. The laws may help us do what is right. But ultimately it is the conscience that can truly guide us in making moral decisions.