Themes and visuals
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The Good Samaritan
with guidance from the Monastic Community of Marango, Caorle.
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The itinerary we have devised for the edition of Sand Nativity 2025, as requested on the theme of inter-religious dialogue in the light of the encyclical FRATELLI TUTTI (on fraternity and social friendship), we will have seven sculptures inspired directly from the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10,25-37), the second chapter of the encyclical entitled ‘A stranger on the road’; three sculptures regarding the eighth chapter on the theme ‘Religions at the service of fraternity in the world’.
When describing the concept of a sculpture, first the Gospel verse of reference has been cited, then the numbers of the FT that express its meaning (words in black and bold), or offer updates of it (text in red), or concern inter-religious dialogue (text in green). At the moment we thought it would be more than exhaustive to quote only the text of the encyclical, rearranging the order of the numbers according to the development of our path.
The last three sculptures deal more precisely with the field of interreligious dialogue on the theme of human brotherhood, and some exemplify brothers, belonging to different faiths, who were able to become universal brothers.
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INTRODUCTION
AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?
THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Then an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”. “What is written in the law?” he asked him. “How do you read it?”. He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind;” and “your neighbour as yourself”. “You’ve answered correctly,” he told him. “Do this and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”.
FT 80. The word “neighbour”, in the society of Jesus’ time, usually meant those nearest us. It was felt that help should be given primarily to those of one’s own group and race. For some Jews of that time, Samaritans were looked down upon, considered impure. They were not among those to be helped. Jesus, himself a Jew, completely transforms this approach. HE ASKS US NOT TO DECIDE WHO IS CLOSE ENOUGH TO BE OUR NEIGHBOUR, BUT RATHER THAT WE OURSELVES BECOME NEIGHBOURS TO ALL.
FT 57. THE ISSUE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS:
- indifference vs - to resolve our conflicts
- to care for one another
FT 59. The desire to imitate God’s own way of acting gradually replaced the tendency to think only of those nearest us: “The compassion of man is for his neighbour, but the compassion of the Lord is for all living beings” ( Sir 18,13).
FT 62. To understand THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN: love does not care if a brother or sister in need comes from one place or another. For “love shatters the chains that keep us isolated and separate; in their place, it builds bridges. Love enables us to create one great family, where all of us can feel at home… Love exudes COMPASSION* and dignity”.
* it is necessary to clarify that the term compassion does not indicate a simple feeling of pity, but in the Bible refers to a concrete and factual act of caring for those in need.
#1 sculpture Marielle Heessels
The sculpture opening the event will be depicting the Good Samaritan Parable set in the time of Jesus. The emphasis is put on the person in need (the jew) and the Samaritan landing a hand. The robbers or the priest and Levite could be visible but the main point to convey is the Samaritan caring for the Jew. Here are a couple of examples.
#2 sculpture. Vadim Gryadov
AN INJURED AND ABANDONED STRANGER
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For this sculpture , we are looking for a contemporary setting for the parable, meaning it is set in modern days representing issues of our times.
Jesus took up the question and said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead.
FT 76. Let us turn at last to the injured man. There are times when we feel like him, badly hurt and left on side of the road. We can also feel helpless because our institutions are neglected and lack resources, or simply serve the interests of a few, without and within. Indeed, “globalized society often has an elegant way of shifting its gaze. Under the guise of being politically correct or ideologically fashionable, we look at those who suffer without touching them. We televise live pictures of them, even speaking about them with euphemisms and with apparent tolerance”.
FT 72. Jesus chose to start when the robbery has already taken place, lest we dwell on the crime itself or the thieves who committed it. Yet we know them well. We have seen, descending on our world, the dark shadows of neglect and violence in the service of petty interests of power, gain and division.
FT 65. Someone is assaulted on our streets, and many hurry off as if they did not notice. People hit someone with their car and then flee the scene. Their only desire is to avoid problems; it does not matter that, through their fault, another person could die. All these are signs of an approach to life that is spreading in various and subtle ways. What is more, caught up as we are with our own needs, the sight of a person who is suffering disturbs us. It makes us uneasy, since we have no time to waste on other people’s problems. These are symptoms of an unhealthy society. A society that seeks prosperity but turns its back on suffering.
FT 75. “Robbers” usually find secret allies in those who “pass by and look the other way”. There is a certain interplay between those who manipulate and cheat society, and those who, while claiming to be detached and impartial critics, live off that system and its benefits. There is a sad hypocrisy when the impunity of crime, the use of institutions for personal or corporate gain, and other evils apparently impossible to eradicate, are accompanied by a relentless criticism of everything, a constant sowing of suspicion that results in distrust and confusion. The complaint that “everything is broken” is answered by the claim that “it can’t be fixed”, or “what can I do?” This feeds into disillusionment and despair, and hardly encourages a spirit of solidarity and generosity. Plunging people into despair closes a perfectly perverse circle: such is the agenda of the invisible dictatorship of hidden interests that have gained mastery over both resources and the possibility of thinking and expressing opinions.
#3 sculpture. Baldrick Buckle
THE INDIFFERENT...PASS BY
This sculpture is set in modern times, inspired again by the parable and looking for contemporary ways to express indifference. Main point of about the passer by is that they were people of power that did not live what they preached.
A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
FT 63. Several persons passed him by, but failed to stop. These were people holding important social positions, yet lacking in real concern for the common good. They would not waste a couple of minutes caring for the injured man, or even in calling for help.
FT 68. The parable clearly does not indulge in abstract moralizing, nor is its message merely social and ethical. It speaks to us of an essential and often forgotten aspect of our common humanity: WE WERE CREATED FOR A FULFILMENT THAT CAN ONLY BE FOUND IN LOVE. We cannot be indifferent to suffering; we cannot allow anyone to go through life as an outcast. Instead, we should feel indignant, challenged to emerge from our comfortable isolation and to be changed by our contact with human suffering. That is the meaning of dignity.
FT 73. The parable then asks us to take a closer look at THE PASSERS-BY. The nervous indifference that makes them pass to the other side of the road – whether innocently or not, whether the result of disdain or mere distraction – makes the priest and the Levite a sad reflection of the growing gulf between ourselves and the world around us. There are many ways to pass by at a safe distance: we can retreat inwards, ignore others, or be indifferent to their plight. Or simply look elsewhere, as in some countries, or certain sectors of them, where contempt is shown for the poor and their culture, and one looks the other way, as if a development plan imported from without could edge them out. This is how some justify their indifference: the poor, whose pleas for help might touch their hearts, simply do not exist. The poor are beyond the scope of their interest.
FT 74. One detail about the passers-by does stand out: THEY WERE RELIGIOUS, devoted to the worship of God: a priest and a Levite. This detail should not be overlooked. It shows that belief in God and the worship of God are not enough to ensure that we are actually living in a way pleasing to God. A believer may be untrue to everything that his faith demands of him, and yet think he is close to God and better than others. The guarantee of an authentic openness to God, on the other hand, is a way of practising the faith that helps open our hearts to our brothers and sisters.[…]
Paradoxically, those who claim to be unbelievers can sometimes put God’s will into practice better than believers.
FT 86. I sometimes wonder why, in light of this, it took so long for the Church unequivocally to condemn slavery and various forms of violence. Today, with our developed spirituality and theology, we have no excuses. Still, there are those who appear to feel encouraged or at least permitted by their faith to support varieties of narrow and violent nationalism, xenophobia and contempt, and even the mistreatment of those who are different. Faith, and the humanism it inspires, must maintain a critical sense in the face of these tendencies, and prompt an immediate response whenever they rear their head. For this reason, it is important that catechesis and preaching speak more directly and clearly about THE SOCIAL MEANING OF EXISTENCE, THE FRATERNAL DIMENSION OF SPIRITUALITY, OUR CONVICTION OF THE INALIENABLE DIGNITY OF EACH PERSON, AND OUR REASONS FOR LOVING AND ACCEPTING ALL OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
#4 sculpture. Enguerrand David
THE MODEL OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN
(he stops with the wounded Jew on the ground)
This sculpture is set in modern times, depicting a modern version of the Good Samaritan, a love that includes everyone. In my opinion, what is important is that it is the unexpected individual that stopped to help the person in need. It is set in modern times, dealing with contemporary issue, but holding true the meaning of the good samaritans wisdom.
But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion.
FT 82. The parable, though, is troubling, for Jesus says that the wounded man was a Judean, while the one who stopped and helped him was a Samaritan. This detail is quite significant for our reflection on A LOVE THAT INCLUDES EVERYONE. The Samaritans lived in a region where pagan rites were practised. For the Jews, this made them impure, detestable, dangerous. In fact, one ancient Jewish text referring to nations that were hated, speaks of Samaria as “not even a people” (Sir 50,25); it also refers to “the foolish people that live in Shechem” (50,26).
FT 83. So this encounter of mercy between a Samaritan and a Jew is highly provocative; it leaves no room for ideological manipulation and challenges us to expand our frontiers. IT GIVES A UNIVERSAL DIMENSION TO OUR CALL TO LOVE, one that transcends all prejudices, all historical and cultural barriers, all petty interests.
FT 66. Let us look to the example of the Good Samaritan. Jesus’ parable summons us TO REDISCOVER OUR VOCATION AS CITIZENS OF OUR RESPECTIVE NATIONS AND OF THE ENTIRE WORLD, BUILDERS OF A NEW SOCIAL BOND. This summons is ever new, yet it is grounded in a fundamental law of our being: we are called to direct society to the pursuit of the common good and, with this purpose in mind, to persevere in consolidating its political and social order, its fabric of relations, its human goals. By his actions, the Good Samaritan showed that “the existence of each and every individual is deeply tied to that of others: life is not simply time that passes; LIFE IS A TIME FOR INTERACTIONS”.
FT 77. Each day offers us a new opportunity, a new possibility. We should not expect everything from those who govern us, for that would be childish. We have the space we need for CO-RESPONSIBILITY in creating and putting into place new processes and changes. Let us take an active part in renewing and supporting our troubled societies. Today we have a great opportunity to express our innate sense of fraternity, to be Good Samaritans who bear the pain of other people’s troubles rather than fomenting greater hatred and resentment. Like the chance traveller in the parable, we need only have a pure and simple desire to be a people, a community, constant and tireless in the effort to include, integrate and lift up the fallen. We may often find ourselves succumbing to the mentality of the violent, the blindly ambitious, those who spread mistrust and lies. Others may continue to view politics or the economy as an arena for their own power plays. For our part, let us foster what is good and place ourselves at its service.
FT 70. It is remarkable how the various characters in the story change, once confronted by the painful sight of the poor man on the roadside. The distinctions between Judean and Samaritan, priest and merchant, fade into insignificance. Now there are only two kinds of people: THOSE WHO CARE FOR SOMEONE WHO IS HURTING AND THOSE WHO PASS BY; those who bend down to help and those who look the other way and hurry off. Here, all our distinctions, labels and masks fall away: it is the moment of truth. Will we bend down to touch and heal the wounds of others? Will we bend down and help another to get up? This is today’s challenge, and we should not be afraid to face it. In moments of crisis, decisions become urgent. It could be said that, here and now, anyone who is neither a robber nor a passer-by is either injured himself or bearing an injured person on his shoulders.
#5 sculpture. Kuba Zimacek
The Samaritan cares for the wounded
Set in modern days, it depicts someone taking time out of their ever busy life to offer support even though it might cost time or possessions. It will be the 2nd exemple given of the Good Samaritan.
He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine.
FT 63. Only one person stopped, approached the man and cared for him personally, even spending his own money to provide for his needs. He also gave him something that in our frenetic world we cling to tightly: HE GAVE HIM HIS TIME. Certainly, he had his own plans for that day, his own needs, commitments and desires. Yet he was able to put all that aside when confronted with someone in need. Without even knowing the injured man, he saw him as deserving of his time and attention.
#6 sculpture. Helena Bangert
The Samaritan entrusts the wounded man to the innkeeper
This piece shows a scene where someone not only helps without expectations but manages to spread his good will to others, also seeks help to help, we are not alone.
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Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him. When I come back I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.’
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FT 78. We can start from below and, case by case, act at the most concrete and local levels, and then expand to the farthest reaches of our countries and our world, with the same care and concern that the Samaritan showed for each of the wounded man’s injuries. Let us seek out others and embrace the world as it is, without fear of pain or a sense of inadequacy, because there we will discover all the goodness that God has planted in human hearts. Difficulties that seem overwhelming are opportunities for growth, not excuses for a glum resignation that can lead only to acquiescence. Yet let us NOT DO THIS ALONE, as individuals. The Samaritan discovered an innkeeper who would care for the man; we too are called to unite as a family that is stronger than the sum of small individual members. For “the whole is greater than the part, but it is also greater than the sum of its parts”.
FT 79. The Samaritan who stopped along the way DEPARTED WITHOUT EXPECTING ANY RECOGNITION OR GRATITUDE. His effort to assist another person gave him great satisfaction in life and before his God, and thus became a duty. All of us have a responsibility for the wounded, those of our own people and all the peoples of the earth. Let us care for the needs of every man and woman, young and old, with the same fraternal spirit of care and closeness that marked the Good Samaritan.
FT 64. WHICH OF THESE PERSONS DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH? This question, blunt as it is, is direct and incisive. Which of these characters do you resemble? We need to acknowledge that we are constantly tempted to ignore others, especially the weak. Let us admit that, for all the progress we have made, we are still “illiterate” when it comes to accompanying, caring for and supporting the most frail and vulnerable members of our developed societies. We have become accustomed to looking the other way, passing by, ignoring situations until they affect us directly.
#7 sculpture. Hanneke Supply
BECOME NEIGHBOUR, UNIVERSAL BROTHER
In this piece we find ways to express our interconnectedness, to be a neighbour, to understand the importance of others with compassion.
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Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” “The one who showed mercy to him,” he said. Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same.”
FT 81. Jesus asks us to be present to those in need of help, regardless of whether or not they belong to our social group. In this case, the Samaritan became a neighbour to the wounded Judean. By approaching and making himself present, he crossed all cultural and historical barriers. Jesus concludes the parable by saying: “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37). In other words, he challenges us TO PUT ASIDE ALL DIFFERENCES AND, IN THE FACE OF SUFFERING, TO DRAW NEAR TO OTHERS WITH NO QUESTIONS ASKED. I should no longer say that I have neighbours to help, but that I MUST MYSELF BE A NEIGHBOUR TO OTHERS.
#8 sculpture. Dmitrii Klimenko
: POPE FRANCIS' MEETING WITH GRAND IMAM AHMAD AL-TAYYEB
FT 285. In my fraternal meeting, which I gladly recall, with the Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, “we resolutely [declared] that religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood. These tragic realities are the consequence of a deviation from religious teachings. They result from a political manipulation of religions and from interpretations made by religious groups who, in the course of history, have taken advantage of the power of religious sentiment in the hearts of men and women… God, the Almighty, has no need to be defended by anyone and does not want his name to be used to terrorize people”.
#9 sculpture. Pedro Mira
Mary, Joseph and their donkey on their way to Bethlehem. We use this image to remind us of the simplicity and vulnerability of the family. What would we do meeting a family in need.
#10 sculpture. Slava Borecki
: UNIVERSAL BROTHERS
FT 286. In these pages of reflection on universal fraternity, I felt inspired by our brothers and sisters who are not Catholics: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JANE GOODALL, MAHATMA GANDHI and many more.
# 11 Nativity Ilya Filimontsev, Susanne Ruseler, Michela Ciapinni
This is the grand iconic finale of the show...family, community, hope, connection, light.
#12 Universal brothers, figures of hope. Radovan Zivny
This sculpture will be dedicated to Giacomo Gobbato, a young man from Jesolo who recently lost his life while protecting a woman from being robbed.