26th. Sunday of Year (A)
(Ezekiel 18:25-28; St. Paul to the Philippians 2:1-5; Matthew
21:28-32)
Last week’s Gospel parable concerned
men being hired to work in the master’s vineyard. Today, Jesus picks up once more the theme of
work in the vineyard and goes on to develop His earlier teaching. His
focus, as before, is on the attitude of those called to work; this time, the
attitude of two sons with regard to their own father in whose vineyard they are
told to work.
What is your
opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, ‘Son, go out and
work in the vineyard today.’ He said in
reply, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards he changed his mind and went. The man came to the other son and gave the
same order. He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did his father’s will? They answered, “The
first.”
Now the teaching of today’s parable
is supremely close to the heart of Jesus because it concerns “doing the will of
His Father”:
"Which of the
two did his father’s will?" Jesus asked.
Jesus, you will recall, once told us
the whole purpose of His own coming on earth:
I have come
down from heaven not to do My will but to do the will of Him Who sent
Me. (John 6:38)
Nor was that an expression of some
merely passing emotion; for, in the most agonizing moments of His suffering in
the Garden, in torments which caused Him to sweat blood, He repeated those same
words to strengthen Himself:
Abba, Father,
all things are possible to You. Take this cup away from Me, but not what I will
but what You will. (Mark
14:36)
And above all, that very same
attitude is fundamental to the only prayer He taught us, which is, ultimately,
the only prayer we need:
Our Father Who
art in heaven; hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on
earth as it is in heaven.
Therefore, for all who want to be
disciples of Jesus, our life as Christians is not simply a matter of carrying
out a determined task in the master’s vineyard with humble trust and respect,
but rather a journey to be undertaken with a loving desire to become true
children of the Father Who is ever drawing us to, and calling us in, Jesus, Our
Lord and Saviour.
Presuming we have such a desire, how
are we, in fact, going to set about doing His will, with and in Jesus, and
finding our salvation?
Let me first of all clear up a
possible misunderstanding resulting from the first reading. To be sure, it is not a mistake that would
easily be made by any sincere disciple of the Lord; but for some going through
difficulties, perhaps only half-hearted in their love for the faith, those words
of Ezekiel in our first reading might be thought to signal an easy way
out:
If a wicked
man, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just,
he shall preserve his life.
Someone might think -- as, for
example, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great is reported to have done --
that one could leave thinking about conversion and the good life until death was
at hand, and then, “turn away from wickedness” and be saved from all past sins
by the unique power of the baptismal sacrament.
In such a case, however, conversion
would be more apparent than real, only having been ultimately adopted after
life-long indulgence of one’s weaknesses and gratification of one’s lusts; with
professed love for the Lord faring no better than Herod’s ‘reverence’ for John
the Baptist. Moreover, Ezekiel’s words
“turning from wickedness does what is right and just” would not seem to give any
encouragement to such worldliness: for a death-bed, fag-end, remnant of life, is
hardly a suitable time for beginning to do what is right and just, let alone a
fitting gift to offer the Lord.
And so, whilst it is, indeed, never
too late to mend; and whilst it is always possible -- even at the eleventh hour,
and in whatever situation one may find oneself -- to turn to God our Father and
find forgiveness in the name of Jesus; nevertheless, it is absolutely essential
that we turn to the Father in sincerity and truth.
St. Paul told us in the second
reading how we should set about trying to do the Father’s will:
Let the
same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
Today we often hear people with a
fundamentalist turn of mind, saying:
“All that is necessary is to read the Scriptures and do what Jesus did”,
or, “do what Jesus would have done”. Let
us just look rationally at those two bits of fundamentalist advice. “We must do what Jesus did.” How can we do
that? Jesus lived on earth two thousand
years ago, His circumstances were not the same as ours today; our society, with
its background and its understanding of the world, its possibilities and
prospects, is far different from that of Jewish society in Jesus’ time. Jesus, with His sublime understanding of
people and of the workings of divine grace, sometimes did things, spoke words,
which we today -- having only a sin-stained appreciation of, and sensitivity
for, our fellow men, together with a native ignorance of the workings of divine
grace -- would not dare to say or think of doing. "All we need to do is to read the Scriptures
and do what Jesus did." Indeed! Who would dare to say with Jesus: "It is not
fair to give the children’s food to dogs” to a woman begging for her daughter’s
healing? Or again, what doctor or nurse, or, indeed, anyone in a position to be
of help, would treat dear friends, as Jesus -- in His supreme love and divine
wisdom -- treated Mary, Martha and Lazarus:
When He heard
that (Lazarus) was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He
was. (John 11:6)
Let us therefore recall the
Apostle's teaching:
Let the same
mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
We cannot 'do what Jesus would have
done', until we have, in truth, the same mind, the same attitude, as Jesus; and
that can only come about by the gift of the Holy Spirit, for it was the Spirit
Who led Jesus on His earthly mission.
Now, the Spirit of Jesus is not
given to any of us either fully or permanently, nor is He given to all of us in
the same degree. However, the Holy
Spirit of Jesus is given in
sublime and abiding fullness to Mother Church so that she can make her children
living members of that Body of Christ in which all have a unique purpose and
personal role to fulfil for the Body as a whole, and for the glory of the
Father. Therefore, our first and supreme
duty, in order to learn and to do the Father’s will, is to hear and obey Jesus’
clear commandments given for all His disciples in the Scriptures and in their
authoritative presentation to us by Mother Church. That, indeed, we can all do thanks to the
baptismal grace of the Holy Spirit given to all who believe in and commit
themselves to Jesus. That is the minimum
expected of a true, catholic, disciple.
But in order to have the same mind as Jesus Himself, and so do the
Father’s particular will for each one of us, we must desire and pray much
more.
By enabling us to obey the
commandments of Jesus and the Church, the Spirit can be said to rule our
actions. However, most of our choices in
life do not directly or necessarily involve serious sin, being largely somewhat
indifferent choices of themselves. And
so, if we aspire to have the same attitude and mind as Jesus and thus to do the Father’s will in all things, we
must ask, beg, pray, the Holy Spirit not only to rule our actions so as to keep
us from sin, but also to guide our lives in every respect to the extent that it
is no longer we who live, but rather -- through the Spirit -- Jesus living in us
for the Father, as St. Paul said:
It is no
longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the
flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for
me. (Galatians 2:20)
The Spirit is the Father’s Gift,
Jesus' bequest, to Mother Church; He is not ours, He cannot be acquired, so to
speak, and then possessed. Because He is
Gift, we have to keep close to the Father in prayer, and to Jesus in the
Eucharist, if we aspire to receive the Spirit ever anew and appreciate Him ever
more faithfully. Moreover, we must also
beg the Holy Spirit Himself to so penetrate our very being that He might guide and rule us, not only in our rejection
of sin, but also in our own free choices and deepest desires, until He has
wholly transformed us into His faithful instruments for the Father’s glory. In other words, we should beg the Spirit to
make each of us a likeness of Jesus painted by His own divine hand for the
Father’s purposes in our world of today, rather than allow us to make ourselves
into an inauthentic imitation produced by personal pride under the motivation of
a fevered imagination or esoteric fancy.
But once again, how -- with what dispositions --
should we thus turn to the Holy Spirit in prayer?
For such final guidance we should
look to our Blessed Lady who, after her beloved Son’s resurrection from the
dead, saw Him disappear from her sight into heaven at His Ascension into
Heaven. What joy for Him filled her mind and flooded
her heart as she thought of her Son’s glory and fulfilment with the Father! But also, inevitably, what gnawing emptiness
-- though never any sorrow – she
experienced in herself, albeit never
for herself!! What a loss! What a longing!! What a gulf!!!
And precisely for such a suffering
Mother of, and Model for, the Church, the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and
bestowed by Jesus, to completely satisfy and transfigure such dispositions. Because of her longing and love for Jesus,
because of her total self-emptiness, Mary could and would become the chef
d’oeuvre of the Holy Spirit … for ever serving Mother Church as a most sublime
lightning conductor, so to speak, drawing and leading the light and the power,
the fire and the beauty, of the Holy Spirit -- the eternal bond of Love uniting
the Almighty Father and His only-begotten Son -- to Mother Church and
potentially into the minds and hearts of all her children.
My dear brothers and sisters in
Christ, it is in like dispositions of love for Jesus and emptiness of self that
– with the help of Mary our Mother -- we should pray to the Holy Spirit for His
guidance and strength in our lives, that Jesus may be ever-born- anew in us:
(Jesus) said
in reply to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother? Who are My brothers?” And stretching out His hand toward His
disciples, He said, “Here are My mother and My brothers. (Matthew 12:48-9)
Thus may we, worshipping God the
Father in Spirit and in Truth, become true sons and daughters of His in Mother
Church, proclaiming the Good News of Jesus and bearing witness to the power of
His Spirit, so that:
All, in heaven
and on earth and under the earth, may (come to) confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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