I have used the story below in a variety of settings and contexts since 1999 when I first read it in the Jesuit Review America Magazine. It is based on a real life experience and, as it turns out, is a contemporary rendering of a very old, and very familiar story. One of my favorites, it was written by Richard J. O’Dea. These are his words.

RECENTLY I WAS FORTUNATE to witness a modern re-enactment of the story known as “The Good Samaritan” (Lk. 10:29-37). I was giving a series of lectures on English literature at Washington State University in Pullman. Each week I would fly from Seattle, rent a car in Spokane and drive to Pullman to deliver the talk. The next day I would return to Spokane and fly back to Seattle.

After the seventh lecture, the airport in Spokane was closed because of fog, so I took the bus for Seattle. It was a milk run that infuriated my fellow passengers, businessmen who had also missed their flights. They all had meetings to make in Houston, New Orleans or New York, and they voiced their frustration.

Soon after we left Spokane the bus picked up a drunk, one of the worst I have ever seen. He looked as if he had been in a fight the night before, or perhaps had fallen through a plate-glass window, for his arms and head were covered with bloody bandages. My fellow passengers complained that he should not have been permitted to board the bus.

They had probably never in their lives seen such a person. He immediately fell asleep in the front of the bus, snoring and drooling. Then he slid halfway from his seat into the aisle, which enraged his fellow travelers even more.

At the next stop, a town named Davenport, a beautiful young woman boarded the bus. She was tall, slender, blond and elegantly dressed in a long camel’s hair coat. Every masculine eye on the bus turned toward her, and the complaints halted.

As we neared the Cascade Mountains, the bus became quite cold. Suddenly the young woman rose from her seat, walked up to the inebriated man, folded his arm over his chest and helped him back into his seat. Then she took off her coat, covered him with it and returned to her seat. There was complete silence in the bus; for there was a beauty in her gesture that made us seem ugly, and we all knew it.

Both the young woman and the intoxicated man left the bus in Everett, seven hours later. By then he was sober enough to hold the coat for her and thank her. Then he bent and kissed her hand. We drove off in silence, forgetting for the moment how important we thought we were.

~ Richard J. O’Dea, “A Modern Good Samaritan” in America, Vol. 180, No. 7, March 6, 1999, 18.