With God’s love, the seemingly impossible becomes possible, because, with His love, a complete stranger becomes a neighbor and a choice that can have dire consequences is made with ease. Between the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan, it is the Samaritan that can lose the most, because he puts himself in greater risk, since he does what the others avoided.

The priest passes by because, if the man lying in the street is a non-Jew, he risks defilement and would have to go through a lengthy purification process, so, in his mind, he can’t even check to see if the man is dead.

The Levite passes by, because he is afraid, since it is clear that this road is obviously full of bandits and robbers and they were known to use the seemingly sick and dying as decoys.

It is only the Samaritan who puts all that aside and strictly out of compassion, tends this man wounds and even though he faces the same risks and even more so, since he can also be identified with this unknown man, who may be a thief or murderer himself, it becomes irrelevant to the mercy he has placed above all else.

And, this is the model that Jesus gives us; this is what it means to be a neighbor and to love our neighbor as ourselves, because love, true Christian love, begets charity and charity, in the words of St. Gertrude the Great: “makes its own what belongs to our neighbors.”

For, any charitable deed, any work that we do, must be motivated by love, not simple, emotional and attached love, but love in its truest form, that is, sacrificial, unassuming and selfless.

It was Blessed Mother Teresa who used to say: “If we pray, we will believe; If we believe, we will love; If we love, we will serve.”

That is why whenever we speak of love, it is so difficult, because we truly cannot speak of it as though it is our own, for the very essence of love itself is both a mystery and a seeming contradiction, one that I am sure we are all familiar with at this point, that in order to love we need to experience love, and in order for that to happen, we need to spend time with He who is love itself, because without God, all love, whether we believe it or not, is empty, all love, without Him, is still wanting.

That is why at this Mass as at every Mass it is made so clear, because, when I, or any priest, holds up that Eucharist we are literally holding before you a beating heart, holding the essence, the very source and the center of all of our love.

So, that what we receive becomes a part of who we become, and we then love not with our own abilities, but with God’s, so that truly we love everyone, through, with and in Him. And, with Blessed Mother Teresa we, too can say: “I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself.”

And, personally, I cannot think of a better message, or any better words to leave you with before I go, because, if you take anything from any of the homilies that I have preached to you these past four years, it is that our lives should be motivated and led strictly and only by the love of God. Granted, sometimes we tend to get in His way, and not let His love work, but that is the struggle of being a Christian, of letting His Will be done in spite of our own, because true love gives of itself in spite of itself and there is nothing greater in the entire universe than to know that we are men and women freely governed and led by God’s Will, by our love of His.

Because, in the end, what truly matters is holiness, and the mark of holiness is simply this: loving God with the entirety of ourselves, with all our heart, all our being, all our strength and all our mind, because, by doing so, everything else follows, love of neighbor, peace of heart, and obedience to His Will.

Therefore, if I can leave you with anything it is simply that, because when we realize that we realize, too, indeed, we are a dependent people, a dependent people, however, who daily do the impossible because, ultimately, all things, everything is possible with God.