29th Sunday Year A 2020

 

 29^th. Sunday, Year (A)

(Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; 1^st. Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21)

 

 

 

Our Gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit, and with much conviction.

Dear People of God, do those words used by St. Paul to characterize his proclamation of the Gospel ... Power, Holy Spirit, Conviction ... seem valid for our modern Christian experience and awareness?  If not, then surely their absence would be a condemnation of the current practice of Christian life and witness in Western society?  Let us therefore look a little more closely at them.

Power:  The Gospel originally came making demands ‘Repent and believe’ because it was offering power:

power to resist and ultimately overthrow the forces of evil which debase human beings and defile human society; a glorious power to which the martyrs who suffered so horrendously in that basilica of pagan pleasure and Christian torments called the Coliseum bore witness in the imperial city of Rome;

power to reject the popular fables and political interference that mocked and abused religious convictions; a power, that is, to bear prophetic witness to a Christian understanding and appreciation of life where earthly needs and callings are in harmony with supernatural aspirations: a life offering a fulness of beauty and hope hitherto unknown;

power to perform wonders for the betterment and extension of public health and education, wonders of fraternal charity and personal self-sacrifice above and beyond all merely normal expectations and possibilities.

These were all prominent in the original proclamation of the Gospel, to enable people rooted in a pagan world to get up -- so to speak -- and follow Christ.   Today, like things still occur in the lives of religious and saintly figures, but the great miracle of all is Mother Church herself still standing and witnessing to the truth of Christ and the power of His Spirit despite the failings of some of her children, and world-wide opprobrium and persecution, despite a modern, political version of biblical Phariseism which allows governments who deny the existence and authority of any God, to claim they themselves have a pseudo-divine wisdom and insight to recognize what is good and bad for humanity, and to determine right and wrong for their own peoples according to their own opportunistic rules of political correctness.

Over the centuries empires  have come and gone while Mother Church abides: admittedly, often in need of refreshment and renewal, even more urgently today indeed, when the world’s arrogance before God is so blatant; but, nevertheless, being subject to Him Who can, and has never failed to, refresh and renew her in the ways of holiness and truth which are His glory, she faces those enemies of His who pervert His saving truth by promoting themselves and their pseudo-holiness in the world today, with a calm confidence and humble trust.

Conviction:  How the early Christians amazed the Roman empire by the conviction that enabled them to stand strong in faith despite the direst torments inflicted in Coliseum’s all over the pagan world!

Men, women, boys and girls, children … all lovers of Christ able to ‘stop the mouths of lions’ as the Scriptures say, professing the Christian Faith in droves from East and West, North and South …. All, through the indomitable power of their convictions, were brightly shining witnesses to the death and Resurrection of Jesus and the veracity of His Church’s Gospel proclamation.

Power and Conviction, characteristics of the Gospel!  But there is yet something more, something supremely other and totally sublime:

The Gift of the Holy Spirit.

Those who worked such prodigies of power for our understanding of human nature in individuals and in its expansion into an authentically human society, all those invincible martyrs, men, women, and even children, of mostly humble bearing, were not only powerful, marvellous, they were indeed beautiful because of the Holy Spirit – Jesus’ Gospel Gift -- dwelling within, and working through, them unhindered and untrammelled.

We see the sublime fulness of human goodness and beauty in Jesus Himself, in His daily dealings with and endeavours for His people; and in today’ Gospel reading we were most privileged to hear perhaps the apogee of beauty and wisdom of the Holy Spirit abiding and working in Jesus Himself through His Gospel words addressed to those who would have trapped Him and destroyed Him:

Then the Pharisees plotted how they might entrap Him in speech. They sent their disciples to Him, with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that You are a truthful man and that You teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And You are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for You do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is Your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”  Knowing their malice, Jesus said, “Why are you testing Me, you hypocrites?  Show Me the coin that pays the census tax.” Then they handed Him the Roman coin.  He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?”  They replied, “Caesar’s.” At that He said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  When they heard this they were amazed, and leaving Him they went away.

 We too are amazed but, far from leaving Him, we want to become ever more closely one with Him in mind and heart as we continue this holy liturgy of sacrifice and sacrament; for here, we hope, we pray, we long, yes, we most humbly beg Him to share ever more and more with us His Gift of the Holy Spirit:

‘Lord Jesus, by the gift of your glorious and Most Holy Spirit, may we bear authentic witness to the truth and beauty of Your Gospel by the power and conviction of our lives as Your disciples in Mother Church.’

Dear People of God, Saint Paul teaches us that the words of Jesus’ Gospel bring power and conviction into our lives; Jesus Himself, Paul’s Master and our Lord and Saviour, shows us that, despite human hatred and conniving, His Good News -- wrapped in His own words of sublime beauty – offers the saving grace of divine wisdom and eternal truth and salvation to all who will forget their own earthly agendas long enough to  hear it, to listen to it, and thus allow themselves to experience something of the warmth and sweetness of its embrace.                DEO GRATIAS!!

 

                            

28th Sunday Year 1 2020

 

 28^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Isaiah 25:6-10; St. Paul to the Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14)

 

Today we are celebrating God’s infinite goodness to us in Jesus Christ His Son, Our Lord, in the context of His yearly generosity to us in the harvest.  There is a close connection between these two aspects of God's love for us, a connection which the celebrant highlights in the course of Mass:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation, through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made: it will become for us the bread of life;

and, when offering the wine, he says:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation, through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands: it will become our spiritual drink.

In that way we are led to recognize that not only is the whole of God’s creation good, but also that, because of its natural goodness, the whole of God’s creation can become a channel for our supernatural sanctification while the abuse of God’s good creation inevitably brings with it retribution, natural or spiritual.

We know, of course, that there is a great difference between natural goodness and the nourishment needed for supernatural life: food from the ground sustains natural life for but a limited time whereas supernatural life is both eternal and divine.  Earthly bread and wine can, therefore, only sustain and support supernatural life when they have been transformed into the very Body and Blood of the Risen Christ, under the blessing of His Word and by the power of His Spirit; and our understanding this relationship between natural good and supernatural blessing, puts us in a position to appreciate more truly the significance of Isaiah's words:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. 

Such an earthly, natural, picture can well imply an infinitely more splendid, joyous, and fulfilling, occasion: a banquet of heavenly proportions; this Isaiah foresaw and intended, because after those words describing an earthly feast:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines;

he then went on immediately to speak of the spiritual blessings of heavenly life, a life without death or suffering, eternal blessedness:

On this mountain He will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; He will destroy death forever.  The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces; the reproach of his people He will remove from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.   On that day it will be said: “Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!  This is the LORD for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that He has saved us!”

 

“On this mountain”, that is, on the high place where ancient peoples used to gather in order to approach God as closely as they physically could, the better to worship Him.  Today we do not ascend mountains, not even that of Jerusalem intended by Isaiah; no, we come to Mother Church where God has promised to abide with all who seek Him; we come to Mother Church which is the Body of Christ, vivified, guided, and protected to the end of time by the Holy Spirit of both the Father and the Son.  In Mother Church, then, “He will destroy death for ever” and “wipe away the tears from all faces”: for all those, that is, who seek to find in her how great is His goodness and how sweet His saving grace; all those who, subsequently, will be able to say: “Behold our God, to Whom we looked to save us!  This is the LORD for Whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that He has saved us!”

Today, very many people have little or no trust in God: indeed, in our Western world, many find themselves so well-off, so socially distracted, so ‘high’, as to think that they do not need anyone to save them; they consider that they have plenty of what they want, think they can easily get more, and consequently cannot see themselves in need of anything for which they might have to pray before some God.  And what is even more, they do not, will not, acknowledge any God able to exercise any authority whatsoever in their lives, no God before whom they might feel responsible.  

Now, that is the precisely the situation painted by Our Lord in the parable we heard about the wedding feast and those invited to it.  The Father has prepared this banquet for His Son and the guests ignored the invitation given them.  The Father sent a further and urgent request for their presence at the banquet, but some cursed and killed those who brought His invitation, while others, perhaps, contented themselves with just mocking the messengers; it matters little, however, the result was the same: they were not going to the banquet, they had much else, more important and more interesting, to attend to.

Today, in our society, the very same drama is being unwittingly prepared: our worldly well-being will certainly end; what may now seem to be mere flies-in-the-ointment will fester and the bubble will, soon enough, burst.  Why? Because godlessness cannot resist, let alone master, the forces of destruction becoming rampant in a world embracing sin and rejoicing in godlessness as does ours today:

Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith.  Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-5)

There is nothing in this world, neither power nor money, neither science nor technology, and most certainly not our own moral pretensions, that can save us from the evil, lodged and seeking to become rooted, in the human heart, and from the weakness inherent to our human make-up.   God alone -- in and through Jesus Christ – saves, by His Holy Spirit, those who have faith in Him.

In the Gospel story there were some, the poor and the needy, the bad and good alike, who were urgently invited by circumstances to come to the banquet; it did not matter who they were or where they came from; all that mattered to the king was what they became once they were in the banqueting hall. 

We are told that the King Himself came in to see His guests sitting at the tables and:

When he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.  He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence.  

What is that “wedding garment”?    St. Paul tells us when he says (Romans 13:14):

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil its lusts.

The rich and the prosperous in the Gospel passage were fully occupied making such important provisions for the well-being of their flesh and the fulfilment of its desires, that they refused the wedding invitation; and likewise today, you do not usually find those who seek fame and power, cultivate influence and promote pride, in Church; because such people want to remain, prosper, and even to proclaim themselves, whereas we in mother Church as disciples of Jesus are called, as you heard, to put on Christ as Lord and Saviour.

Our parable speaks of only one guest being found in the wedding hall without a wedding garment because he represented ALL those who for whatever reason rejected the King’s invitation: the absolutely essential thing was that he was not wearing a wedding garment, that is he had not, as St. Paul tells us, put on Christ.  And today: the rich and the prosperous -- be they openly irreligious or confirmed, secret, hypocrites – they all have neither wanting nor will for a Lord with authority in their lives, nor need of a Saviour to free them from their sins; for they refuse to acknowledge they have any sins and they will not allow anyone – even God Himself (if He or his Son really exists) -- to have any authority in their lives.

The majority of those to be found in Church are, according to the vociferous non-believers, hypocrites.  But who do they have they in mind when speaking so dismissively of the church-goers they contemn?

It is true that, those who go to Church yet hold on tightly to themselves there, serving their own purposes, following their own lights, rather than loving the Lord and living in obedience to His teaching and the commands of His Church, can indeed be counted among the hypocrites so frequently decried by those outside the Church and whom Jesus had in mind when He said, in His parable:

Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ Many are invited, but few are chosen.

But our Gospel message today is not against the ‘small time’ sinners who can be found in the Church of Christ and who are so disdainfully ‘tarred’ as hypocrites by those outside.  Far from it; today’s Gospel parable is for all those of members of Mother Church who are humble and contrite enough to want indeed to put on Christ as Paul told us, and who -- by His Spirit -- sincerely acknowledge and try to leave behind their own weak and sinful selves for His sake.  Those, accepted by the Father to partake of the feast He has prepared for the glory of His Son and their own joyous future well-being, may be likened to those in our parable who had put on the wedding vestment donated by the King and who – unaccustomed to such finery -- were still perhaps somewhat uncomfortable in it.  After all, does not the parable tell us that the King told his servants to:

Go out, therefore, to the main roads, into the streets, and gather and invite all they found, good and bad alike, to the feast until the hall is filled.

Those poorer ‘invitees’ came to the feast wanting a square meal at the King’s good table; Christians likewise go to Church needing: God’s forgiveness, grace, peace, hope and promised fulfilment.

People of God, we cannot fail, especially at harvest time, to recognize that God’s creation is both bountiful and beautiful: a source of life and great joy for us.  But we must not allow ourselves to get so wrapped up in the beauty and desirability of this earthly banquet as to ignore the invitation that comes along with it to that other eternal banquet which will celebrate an eternal harvest.  The God Who makes us so pleased with this world’s good things, can He not prepare even greater joys for us in His heavenly kingdom?  Of course He can!  Let us, therefore, take up His royal invitation.

God's call is non-judgmental: His invitation of grace and promise of eternal fulfilment are for all: He is both supremely generous in His help (after all He gives us His own Son and His Holy Spirit) and mercifully patient as He awaits our faltering response to His repeated invitations and glorious promises.  Nevertheless, decisions must finally be made and judgment will eventually come, and for that we must prepare.  Therefore, dear People of God, let our lives -- as disciples of Jesus -- resound to and exemplify those words of St. Paul in our second reading:

To our God and Father, be glory forever and ever.   Amen.   

 

 

27th Sunday Year A 2020

 

 27^th Sunday of Year (A)                                     (Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43)

 

In our first reading the prophet Isaiah described Israel as a vineyard planted by the Lord which, despite the care He had taken of it, failed to bring forth good fruit.  And for that, the prophet went on to warn Israel, the Lord would reject her:

Now, I will let you know what I mean to do to my vineyard: take away its hedge, give it to grazing, break through its wall, let it be trampled!  Yes, I will make it a ruin: it shall not be pruned or hoed, but overgrown with thorns and briers; I will command the clouds not to send rain upon it.  The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his cherished plant; He looked for judgment, but see, bloodshed! for justice, but hark, the outcry!  

In fulfilment of this prophecy the kingdom of Israel first of all, and subsequently the kingdom of Judah, were both politically destroyed: both were no longer kingdoms or independent political powers of any sort, just mere tracts of territory ruled by foreign lords, inhabited by vassals.

When, therefore, Jesus took up again the prophecy of Isaiah, when He Himself, told a parable of a landowner who planted a vineyard, prepared for and protected it to the full, and then was unable to get the fruit of the vineyard, His hearers, the religious authorities in Israel and Judah of Jesus’ time themselves totally subject to the world power that was Rome, realized that His words would be of great significance.

And so they were, for Jesus made some changes to the picture originally painted by Isaiah:

The vineyard itself was fruitful (you will remember Jesus’ earlier words):

The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few.  Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into His harvest.  (Mt. 9:37s.)

Yes, the vineyard itself was fruitful.

However, those in charge of the vineyard, the tenants were the unfruitful ones who would not hand over any produce or profit to the landowner even though, eventually, the owner’s very son came to claim it for his father.

The Jewish leaders were not, however, at that moment paying attention to the detail about the Son: they were only intent on what they feared would be the final outcome for themselves: their power, their position of authority, might be taken away from them.

Earlier, the prophet Isaiah had foretold of the destruction of the political kingdoms of Israel and Judah and that prophecy had indeed been realized; kings and rulers had always resisted God’s prophets’ message in order to maintain their own political power (haven’t kings and potentates done that since the beginning of time?).    But now, in Jesus’ time, something much more sinister was taking place: Israel’s religious leaders -- in particular the Pharisees and their Scribes -- were fighting against Jesus to have complete power over God’s spiritual kingdom on earth for themselves, claiming unique authority over God’s spiritual formation of His Chosen People.  Therefore, Jesus now speaks of the end of the cultic authority of Temple with its priests and Levites and of the rejection of the spiritual authority of the Scribes and Pharisees as authentic exponents of the Torah; and ultimately, He even speaks of the end of the whole nations’ spiritual exaltation as the Chosen People of God.

All these privileges, and the provisional type of divine worship they represented, would now have to make way for the future Church of Jesus Christ, the new and authentic People of God, comprising not only Israelites, but all men and women of good-will who would hear and obey the Good News of God’s own Son authentically proclaimed to all mankind:

Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes’?   Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.

You can understand why Jesus was both feared and hated by the proud religious authorities of what had once been the kingdom of David: kings and people had sinned -- ignoring God’s many and great prophets – and now that former kingdom comprised nothing more than the two small and very insignificant Roman provinces of Judea and Samaria, along with mis-trusted Galilee in the north.  Nevertheless, its spiritual pride was even more intense because of such humiliations.  Yes, they hated what had befallen their once spiritually prestigious nation; and now, this  Jesus -- coming indeed from Nazareth in Galilee-of-the-Gentiles of all places -- was proclaiming Himself as the Son – yes, the very Son of God -- come to harvest the fruit due from the vineyard of the Law and the Prophets, promising no Messianic restoration of political power, and proclaiming that Israel’s hitherto unique privilege would no longer be their exclusive pride and joy but would be offered to all: the presently disdained Gentiles and pagans world-wide who knew nothing of God, above all the despicable and most hated Romans now ruling their country.

However, some might be thinking, all this is past history, how is it relevant for us today?  We understand that God punishes sin – He always has -- and we recall that, as punishment for sin in His Chosen People, He once destroyed their temple at Shilo which the early Israelites had thought untouchable; and that He likewise brought the great Temple of Solomon down to the ground; before finally -- as Jesus foretold -- humbling the supremely impressive and most prestigious Temple of Herod.   But what does all this mean for us?  There is no unique Temple today; we are from all nations not just one chosen people: the Kingdom of God’s own Son cannot, surely, be destroyed as were those ancient indeed, but, nevertheless, temporal institutions?

Let us look again at those who brought about the downfall of the Chosen People.

Those responsible for the twice-repeated exiling of Israel were predominantly political figures: kings, with their courtiers and sycophants, their emulators and opponents.   They did great harm to God’s People and were punished accordingly.  However, they opposed, resisted, God’s Kingdom in Israel for predominantly earthly, worldly, reasons, being afraid of the effect of God’s message proclaimed by the Prophets.  There were others, however, such as the Pharisees and their Scribes, who resisted the coming of God’s Kingdom, its flourishing in Israel, by attempting to take control of God’s proclamation itself.  The first opponents were rejected, and indeed ejected into exile, by God; the latter, however, themselves rejected God, and could only be themselves ejected by the death and resurrection of His Son.

People of God today, governments (kings) and those who -- like the Pharisees of old proclaim their own version of a ‘godly’ kingdom of social cohesion and well-being -- are now as one, shouting loud and in unison, LIBERTY, FRATERNITY, EQUALITY, for the deafening of all spiritual and moral teaching of divine origin, and ultimately for the destruction of all religious institutions of and for divine sustenance in the world.  And to punish such world-wide hatred for and ambition-to-replace all that is truly spiritual, the Bible and Christian testimony undoubtedly records, and surely encourages us to expect God’s saving  punishment  today for mankind’s threatened eternal salvation.

God’s People are not restricted to their leaders’ awareness of God’s desires and wishes, possibilities and dealings; they follow their leaders’ teachings in the name of Jesus faithfully and whole-heartedly, and in return they can and do expect some spiritual awareness and understanding, some religious guidance, which are most strangely lacking as regards our world’s current and pandemic troubles.   Is that pandemic, with all its dire troubles and resultant human fears, totally, merely, natural, and of no intentional, no spiritual significance?  Is God indeed irrelevant to, can He be thought to be disinterested in, what is happening all over the world.

My brother and sisters in Christ, we should be supremely careful of, solicitous for, the purity of our faith.   Today there are many who set themselves up as teachers, as guides to worldly success and to temporal happiness.  Indeed, they even lay claim to ‘know’ that God does not exist, and that nothing lies beyond death ... although such assertions are no longer backed up by that scientific knowledge which is modernity’s real pride and joy: knowledge which they can so readily present, prove and even demonstrate by practical experiment and sensible observation.  Spirituality, however, the life and breath of the human spirit is totally, totally, beyond them.

Today, many Catholics and Christians allow – or suffer -- themselves to be persuaded, overwhelmed, by such worldly but also devilish wisdom and its messengers.  Even more sadly, however, there are too many Catholics today who are willing to ignore or even distort Jesus’ Good News of life eternal -- which should be treasured by faith in their own mind and heart -- for a few years of social advantage, worldly comfort, and pseudo-security in a world that offers no future hope, no peaceful remembrance.

There is only one true peace, there is only one true way of progress and profit for salvation, and that is given us by St. Paul, in our second reading:

Brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard in (Mother Church). Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.  Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

(2020)

26th Sunday Year A 2020

 

26^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Ezekiel 18:25-28; St. Paul to the Philippians 2:1-11; Matthew 21:28-32)

 

Jesus takes up once more the theme of workers for the vineyard, and today our attention is centred on the attitude of two brothers called to work in their father’s vineyard.  

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.”

There, as you heard, one of the brothers answered his father with respectful words but did not go to work as promised; the other, on the contrary, began with a blunt refusal and then, changed his mind, and went to work in the vineyard.  We are not told how long it took the latter to change his mind; so, he might have gone almost immediately into his father's vineyard, regretting his disrespectful outburst, or his change of mind and heart might have taken some time, so that he went into the vineyard at perhaps the sixth, the ninth, or even the eleventh hour.  That is a possible link with last week's parable.

The teaching of today’s parable, however, is very close to the heart of Jesus because it concerns “doing the will of the Father”:

"Which of the two did his father’s will?"  Jesus asked.

Jesus, you will recall, once told us the whole purpose of His 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)

That was not merely a dutiful expression of filial awareness, it was the central pillar of His everyday experience of life on earth: in the agonizing moments of His suffering in the Garden which caused Him to sweat blood, He repeated the same words to strengthen Himself in His need:

Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not My will but Yours be done. (Luke 22:42)

Moreover, that same attitude is the essence of 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.

For all, therefore, who want to become true disciples of Jesus, our life as Christians is not simply a matter of carrying out a share of work in the master’s vineyard, but rather of a journey being undertaken with a loving desire to become one with Jesus for the Father, Who is ever inviting us to find our ultimate fulfilment as His obedient children.

Presuming we have such a desire, how are we, in fact, going to set about doing His will on earth and attaining our salvation in His presence in heaven?

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 if someone were going through difficulties or was only half-hearted in their 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.

The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, for example, did think that he could postpone deciding about conversion and the good life until death was at hand, and then, “turn away from wickedness” and be baptized, so as then to be prepared to die with an absolutely ‘clean slate’ so to speak.

However, in such a case, the apparent conversion would only be finally acted out after the penitent had, necessarily , long put up with his inevitable daily faults and failings, and pandered to his ever-recurring weakness and sins.  As for any interim protestations of love for the Lord, when put to the test they could hardly have fared any better than Herod’s reverence for John the Baptist.  Moreover, Ezekiel’s very words would not seem to give any encouragement to such worldliness, for he did say “turn away and do what is right and just”: a death-bed conversion, quite literally the fag end of a life, cannot be thought a suitable opportunity for doing anything at all, let alone what is right and just.

And so, whilst it is, indeed, never too late to mend; and whilst it is always possible -- in whatever situation one might 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 of heart.

And so, St. Paul tells us in the second reading just how we should set about sincerely trying to do the Father’s will, with a ready response to His call:

Have the same attitude that also Christ Jesus had.

And at this point, people of a fundamentalist turn of mind might well say: “All that is necessary is to read the Scriptures and do what Jesus did”. 

Let us just look rationally at those two bits of advice.  “We must do what Jesus did or would have done.” How can we do that?  Jesus lived on earth two thousand years ago, His circumstances were not the same as ours today.  And what is infinitely more, Jesus, with His sublime understanding of people and of the workings of divine grace, sometimes did things, spoke words, which we -- having only a sin-stained appreciation of our fellow men, together with a native ignorance of the workings of divine grace -- would not dare to say or ever 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 anyone who could 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 and try to learn the truths contained in the Apostle's teaching:

Have the same attitude (of mind and heart) that also Christ Jesus had.

We cannot 'do what Jesus would have done', until we have, in truth, the same attitude as Jesus; and that can only come about by the gift of the Spirit, for it was the Spirit Who led Jesus.  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.  The Holy Spirit of Jesus is given in sublime and abiding fullness to Mother Church so that she can make her children members of the Body of Christ in which all have a personal purpose and role to fulfil for that Body 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 those who would love Him and want to be his disciples, commandments passed down to us in the Scriptures and in the authoritative teaching of Mother Church.  Now we can all do that thanks to the baptismal grace of the Holy Spirit given by Jesus to all who believe in Him.  Such essential obedience is the minimum required of a true disciple.

However, in order to have the same attitude as Jesus, and do the Father’s particular will for each one of us, we must, in sincerity of heart, pray much more.  By enabling us to obey the commandments of Jesus and the Church, the Spirit can be said to rule our actions.  Nevertheless, most of our choices in life do not directly or necessarily involve sin: they are predominantly indifferent choices of themselves, and if we aspire to have the same attitude as Jesus and do the Father’s will in all things big and small, we must ask, beg, pray the Holy Spirit to not only 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 Himself living more and more in us for the Father, as St. Paul said (Galatians 2:20):

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.

The Spirit is Jesus’ Gift, Jesus' bequest, to us in Mother Church; He is not ours, He cannot be gotten, so to speak, and then possessed.  Because He is the Gift, we have to keep going to the Father in prayer, and to Jesus in the Eucharist, to receive the Spirit anew, the Gift in ever greater abundance.  Moreover, since He is the Gift we must constantly be trying to live up to, we must therefore beg the Holy Spirit Himself, in our prayers, to penetrate  our being every more deeply, so that He might guide and rule us, not only in our rejection of sin, but also in our free choices and deep desires, until He has ultimately formed us – mind and heart -- as 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 living hand, in and for our world of today, not an inauthentic or blasphemous imitation of what happened in the past, nor a product of merely human cogitation, expressing personal pride and based on current popular, trendy, thinking.

Therefore, taking the words of St. Paul to ourselves in all sincerity let us humbly pray that we may become true sons and daughters of the God Who calls us; and that, through our Spirit-led actions and the Spirit-formed attitude of mind and heart, we may help in some way, small indeed, but nevertheless positive measure to bring it about 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.

Dear People of God, today’s parable is, again, unique to St. Matthew and perhaps we can glean some inkling of why he may have seriously wanted it to be well-remembered, by his telling us of the following words of Jesus which St. Luke also recalls (vv. 31-2):

Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.  When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.

Matthew, Mark and Luke, were as one in their memories of Jesus until Matthew chose to insert today’s Gospel parable of the two sons and their father, along with the words which we have just heard.  Why?

Apparently Matthew wanted the former Pharisees of his congregation to remember those last words of Jesus because, after having strongly underlined the repentance of the younger son in His foregoing parable, those additional words also emphasize anew the importance and ‘power for good’ of repentance in the lives of  Christians, this time the repentance of the tax-collectors (Matthew himself was one!) and prostitutes on their having heard the Good News proclaimed by Jesus of the Kingdom of God.  Matthew was determined that his Christian congregation should never forget the wondrous gift of the spirit of repentance which they themselves had embraced when so many of their former fellows refuse to accept that gift of God!

Dear People of God there are ‘attitudes’ which can be characteristic of individuals and of peoples resulting from their birth and/or development before God, and which it is essential for those individuals and people to remember with deep gratitude in their hearts, and to express most definitely and sincerely in their lives.  For Matthew, the former publican himself, and for all the former Pharisees of his Christian congregation, that most beautiful remembrance of humble repentance should never be allowed to wither away in their hearts due to lack of gratitude to God for such a gracious gift.  God’s gifts are many and varied: some are glorious, some tragic, some inspiring, others humbling, but however varied in their multiplicity answering to our many, many human needs, all, however, are sublimely beautiful and fulfilling for those on whom they are bestowed.

Our sinful world seeks to replace God and His gifts of Faith, Hope, and Charity by the three human values of liberty, fraternity, and equality; and, as we learn from experience, in that process, the variety and vivacity of moral beauty is lost, the calming peace and power of complementarity in human life is misunderstood, while liberty and equality are highly valued in no small measure because of their modern, unquestionable, travelling companions: libido and licence. 

25th Sunday Year A 2020

 

25^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Isaiah 55:6-9; Paul to the Philippians 1:20-24, 27; Matthew 20:1-16)

 

 

 

Dear People of God, we profess that God is all-holy, but what do we mean by “holy”?  In our first reading we were given an intimation of what God’s holiness means:

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD.   As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are My ways above your ways and My thoughts above your thoughts.

This characteristic “otherness”, or perhaps even “strangeness” of God’s holiness was also shown very clearly in the Gospel reading, where you heard the cry of the earlier workmen on receiving their pay for the day:

These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.

Although our understanding can appreciate the attitude of the landowner in the parable, nevertheless our emotions are such that we are much more readily inclined to sympathise with those early workers and, as a result, we find ourselves somewhat puzzled by Jesus telling such a parable for our instruction.

However, Jesus not infrequently shocked people in order to make them pay attention, and perhaps that is the case here: the very difficulty that this parable has for us teaches us a basic, and absolutely essential, lesson: we -- of ourselves -- are not holy; God alone is holy, and He is sublimely Holy.

That was the lesson God had, by His great prophets, sought to teach Israel over many centuries, and it was the prophet Daniel who finally summed up Israel’s long historical experience of God’s dealings with them in words of simple finality giving expression to a fiercely-resisted and long-overdue humble conviction:

O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us shame of face, as it is this day -- to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those near and those far off in all the countries to which You have driven them, because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against You. O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against You.  (Daniel 9:7-8)

The prophet Ezekiel had earlier emphasized the same saving truth when he prophesied:

“The house of Israel says, 'The way of the Lord is not fair.'  O house of Israel, is it not My ways which are fair, and your ways which are not fair?   Therefore, I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways," says the Lord GOD. "Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin ... get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies," says the Lord GOD. "Therefore, turn and live!” (Ezekiel 18:29-32)

Thus, God promised life -- a new heart and a new spirit -- to a people who would learn from His warning proclaimed by Ezekiel.  And, indeed, a fruitful branch of Israel ‘did turn and live’ by learning to humbly acknowledge and whole-heartedly embrace those subsequent words of the great prophet Daniel:

O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against You.

And it was with the furtherance of that same spirit of humble renewal in view – no longer for Israel alone but for mankind as a whole -- that God the Father sent His only-begotten Son as our Redeemer, so that, through His Son’s death and Resurrection on our behalf, and by the subsequent gift of His Spirit, we might be able, ultimately, to truly return to Him and live as His children -- adopted in Jesus His only begotten  Son, made man and become their Saviour -- with filial love before His holy presence for all eternity.   Let us, therefore, listen again to, and carefully learn from, Jesus’ teaching about God and ourselves in this parable.

First of all, why did Jesus tell His disciples this parable?

The central theme of Jesus’ preaching was always the Kingdom of Heaven and its accessibility, and that was the question posed by the Twelve (Matthew 19:25s.) just before Jesus told them our parable:

‘Who then can be saved, (if the rich who-can-do-good-things can’t)?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’

He then proceeded in St. Matthew to answer their problem by His parable, for which Luke only remembered a short saying of Jesus (12:32):

            Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.

In the parable we are told that the landowner:

Went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard (and) agreed with the labourers for a denarius a day;

and that later he went out again about the third, sixth and ninth hours to hire more workers.   Now that was most unusual; there was a steward by his side, he would pay the wages and he would normally have done the drudgery of repeatedly going and coming to negotiate with and hire workers as needed: for on such occasions voices might well be raised, opinions expressed, and accusations made; rough and tough men might, at times, call for firm handling, and such negotiations was not normally carried out by the landowner himself.

But, for this parable, the personal relationship between the landowner and the hired workmen is of the utmost importance: we are told that the first group strike a deal with the landowner: so much work for so much pay.  From then on, subsequent groups trust in the landowners’ generosity, bearing in mind their work; until, with those hired at the eleventh hour, hope in the landowner’s goodness is the whole reason for their undertaking an obviously negligeable amount of work.

The landowner in the parable was compassionately concerned about workers unable to find work; that is why he came out five times looking for husbands and fathers unable to feed and shelter their wives and families without work. Jesus Himself was supremely compassionate towards the lost sheep of Israel; He had come to save them and us from sin by giving Himself, sinless as He was, to death for us.

Look at the workers now.   Those hired at the eleventh hour might well have gone off home after the sixth, and especially after the ninth hour (mid-afternoon) … for who would be hiring men so late?  They remained, however, because they hoped for what seemed most unlikely … they had seen or heard of this landowner hiring men, first of all, at the normal time, then he had come back again mid-morning, mid-day, and even mid-afternoon, offering some jobs and hope … this last group therefore, those who clung on hoping to the very end, were still waiting there at the eleventh hour, one hour before sun-down and tools-down.

What was the difference between those five groups of men? 

Each of the early groups had been waiting to receive offers of work ready and primed with confidence in their own abilities; and now, having completed the task, were keenly aware of the amount of work they had done for the landowner: ‘we have slaved all day; we have been hard at it from dawn, the third, sixth, or ninth hours’.

That, however, was not the whole picture Jesus willed to portray; He was speaking ultimately about the Kingdom of Heaven, His life theme, and only the last group of hired workers -- the last-gasp-group so to speak -- came to recognize the basic reality and truth of their, and our, situation as regards the Kingdom of Heaven.  Only the last group, hired at the very last minute so to speak, said that they had been standing there doing nothing “because no one has hired us”.  Experience had led them to recognize that the opportunity to work was a gift, a blessing, one which they could not give to themselves.   They were the only ones whose experience had made them humble enough to recognize just how much they depended upon the goodness of the landowner, who, indeed, had hired them primarily not so much for the work they could do for him but out of compassion for them and for their families in need.

At the end of the day when all were gathered to receive their pay all those workers taken on in the beginning and then in the third, sixth, and ninth hours were full of their own performances.  The eleventh-hour group, however, were the only ones who, through hope, had become aware of the goodness of the landowner who had shown such compassionate understanding of their need, they were the only ones able to help us too realize something of the joy of the Kingdom of Heaven proclaimed by Jesus, ‘Thank God this landowner came back again for us!’   The last group of workmen -- most fully aware of the landowner’s goodness and compassion, are meant to be models for us all who seek to know, love, and serve God and show gratitude for His gifts. 

The sublime truth being taught by Jesus was that the gift, the reward, God offers to His faithful -- being both divine and eternal -- infinitely transcends any earthly work we can present – any personal merits we can invoke.  It is an undeservable GIFT. Our first and foremost Christian calling and duty is to praise God with grateful hearts and minds for His great goodness whereby He has called us Himself and given us an opportunity to work for His Kingdom on earth, with Jesus, by the power and under the inspiration of His Spirit.  Whatever work we do will only have value before God in so far as it is offered as our small part in the great redeeming work offered to the Father by Jesus, His Son, our Saviour and Brother; but that humble awareness will be, indeed, at the root of all our heavenly delight: God is All in all; He is all for us in Jesus, and we are for Him and for each other in His Spirit.  

There are many who go through life without reference to God, they seek to do their own will, not His; they want to satisfy their own desires not win His promises.  They have that attitude of mind described in the book of Job:

They say to God, 'Depart from us, for we do not desire the knowledge of Your ways.    Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him?  And what profit do we have if we pray to Him?' (21:14-15)

Such people may well come towards the end of their life thinking “I’ve been very successful in my business, I have made a lot of money, built up a good reputation, and have much to leave to my children”.  Indeed, that is how things may seem to others also, such as Job, who, in the midst of all his difficulties and trials, struggled to understand:

Why do the wicked live and become old (and) mighty in power?  Their descendants are established with them in their sight, and their offspring before their eyes. … They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. (Job 21:7-8, 13)

How many suffering people in the world today are tormented with similar thoughts!  And yet, the Christian message is clear: those who work for themselves, for this world alone, will ultimately experience the terrible truth of Jesus’ judgment: “They have had their reward.”  Only work that leads us to forget ourselves and praise God is ultimately acceptable to God and profitable for us.

People of God, whatever our situation during our time on earth -- whatever good we may do and whatever trials we may have to endure, whatever praise we may be given and whatever honours or riches may befall us -- only when we come to gratefully recognize and respond to the great goodness of God secretly and surely guiding and sustaining, protecting and comforting us, in and through all these things, only then will we begin to appreciate the fullness of happiness in Him that we call eternal life.

Here below, we are always – in response to our heavenly calling -- on the way to our heavenly reward, and there can be no greater blessing than, in the course of our efforts for God, to become so totally emptied of all self-esteem and pride, as to be totally open to and able to delight to the full in the infinite beauty and goodness of God, as members of His family in Jesus.  Remember St. Paul's words:

For me, to live is Christ, (and) to depart and be with Christ … that is very much better.  Conduct yourselves (always) in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.