We all have outer garments that point to our differences, but we all wear the same inner garment given to us by God.

 

Twenty Sixth Sunday in OT  A  2020

 

If you remember last week’s Gospel parable, it was rather shocking and seemingly unjust.  The landowner sent workers to work in his vineyard at different hours of the day.  The master then paid the workers who worked one hour the same pay as those who worked in the heat of the day all eight hours.  It wasn’t fair.  It is difficult, is it not, to give up the religion of merits and believe in the gratuitous love of God.

To repeat, it is difficult to give up the religion of merits and believe in the gratuitous love of God.

In today’s Gospel parable, a man had two sons whom he wished to send out to work in the vineyard.  The first said initially no and later changed his mind and then went to work in the vineyard.  The second son said yes but did not go to work in the vineyard.  Which of the two did his father’s will?

 Today’s Gospel parable is a conversion story.  A man said to his first son: ‘Son out and work in the vineyard today.  He said in reply, ‘I will not go,’ but afterwards changed his mind and went.  Saying yes to God means giving up one’s own thoughts and accepting His.  Conversion happens in our lives when we open ourselves to God’s plan for our lives.

Where do we find ourselves in this Gospel parable?

The scribes and the Pharisees were ones who said yes to the kingdom of God as the religious elite.  Their Achilles’ heel was their illusion of being saved by their pious religious practices, and yet Jesus in this parable is being very direct and confronting with the religious leaders of his day by saying the tax collectors and prostitutes were going to enter the kingdom of God first.  The kingdom of God welcomes unexpected folks.

 This parable challenges us as well:  what effect have our prayers and religious practices had on our daily life?  Do they put an end to hatred, wars, and abuses?  While continuing to profess ourselves Christians, do we easily resign ourselves to a life of compromise?  Do we live too easily with injustice, inequality and discrimination?

What are the ways we say no to the will of God in our lives?  For example, I can’t bother with religion. I’m too busy getting ahead in life.  I’m too busy having fun.  The Church has too many defects.  My sinfulness is saying no to God in my life. I can’t forgive myself.  How can I expect God to forgive me?

In today’s Gospel parable, the father told his two sons to work in the vineyard today.  As you pray over this gospel, into what vineyard is the Lord sending you today -- the vineyard of your family, of your neighborhood, of your parish?  Into what vineyard is the Lord sending you today?

Many of us are like the son who initially said no to God’s plan in our life.  The parable is a conversion story.  Our conversion story is a more convinced “yes” passes through no. What does that mean?  That was the conversion of the son who initially said no to his father but later changed his mind and went to work in the vineyard.

In the second Scripture reading, Paul begins his beautiful hymn to Christ by encouraging the Philippians to have the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose as did Jesus.  “Have in you the attitude that was also in Christ Jesus.  Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; he humbled himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death, even death on a cross?”

What does it mean for you to have the same attitude as Jesus Christ?  Are you in touch with your own conversion story?  God calls us who are sinners, who have said no to God’s call in our sinfulness but yet we somehow open ourselves to receive the merciful love of Jesus.  Yes, our conversion story is a more convinced yes passes through no.  We always stand in need of the generosity and forgiveness of God.  More than that, we need to experience conversion many times, and we are called each and every day to say yes to the plan of God in life.

Many things divide us:  language, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, ideology, culture, personal history, temperament, private wounds, and moral judgments.  It is hard, in the face of all this, to see people as brothers and sisters, who are different from us, as equally important citizens of this world, and as loved and valued by God in the same way as we are.

And so, we often live in a certain distrust of each other, seeing danger where there is only difference.  We then either actively oppose someone or simply steer clear of him or her.

When we fail to realize is that these differences are really our outer garments, things that in the end are accidental and incidental to our real selves.

What is the meaning of this?

Are we able to look beyond the outer garment of a person and be in touch with their inner garment, the garment given to each one of us by God himself?

The inner of garment of each one of us is that we have all come from God and one day we will return home to God.  Our inner garment is the image and likeness of God inside each and every one of us.  Yes, we all have outer garments that point to our differences, but we all wear the same inner garment given to us by God.

When we are in touch with our inner garments, we can see each other as brothers and sisters, we can go into the vineyard of the kingdom of God and do the work Jesus has missioned us to do, and we can be transformed by having the same mind in us that is in Christ Jesus.

 

Have a blessed day.          

God's measuring yardstick for his disciples is one of generosity and forgiveness.

 

Twenty Fifth Sunday in  OT  A   2020

 

Today’s Gospel parable gives us a glimpse of God’s measuring yardstick of what it means to be a disciple – it is a yardstick of generosity and forgiveness.  Jesus asks us the grumbling workers: “Are you envious because I am generous?  Thus, the last will be first, and the first last.”

Now it is true that this parable of the “workers in the vineyard” can seem to be hard to understand.  The parable deals with landowners and workers, wages and profits, and fair and unfair labor practices.  But to understand the parable, we need to delve into what the kingdom of God is like.

After all, in our world, hard work generally pays off, at least that’s what we have been taught.    If you work hard, do well in school, put all your energy into your work then you will be rewarded.

From one perspective, is Jesus trying to upset us in telling this parable?  Is all my hard work a waste of time?  So, how are we to pray?

 Lord, for too many people, our modern culture is ruled by envy, not by generosity, and this is tearing our human family apart.  Too many people think that life’s rewards should be calculated on the basis of work alone.

We must learn to measure by God’s yardstick -- one of generosity and forgiveness.  Consider the ways God has been all-heart to us.  We are the ones who at times have worked just one hour in the vineyard.  Yet, we are a blessed people.  We are a forgiven people.  May we never forget that all is a gift of God.  With God’s yardstick, we confess the times that in our smallness of spirit we thought that generosity is a sin.

Lord, we thank you for the times when you give us a glimpse of your kingdom, invite us to enter into your generosity and set us free from the bondage of envy.  Forgive us for when we grumble at you for the way you share out your blessings, for comparing ourselves with others who we think had things easier.

We thank you for the people of our lives who have taught that the root of our problem is being calculating instead of welcoming life as your gift.   Lord, we pray that your church will be the presence of Jesus in the world showing us a vision of your kingdom marked by generosity, not envy.  Help us to better understand that circumstances permit some people to work only one hour and may we embrace that they deserve a full reward.  Help us to embrace God’s grace in people’s lives.

The God we believe in is not a bookkeeper who dishes out what we deserve.  Rather, God is a grace-filled benefactor who gives and gives and gives.  Rather than being all-fair, God is all-heart,

Today’s reading is an invitation for us to go looking for God’s forgotten ones -- to treat them not with a human standard of fairness, but with a holy abandon of love, compassion and un-earned generosity.

Lord, we thank you for the people in our lives who taught us that true love is always generous and helped us move beyond possessiveness and envy:

n  Parishioners who do more than their fair share in building up our faith community.

 

n  Family members who are always present to us in our time of need.

 

n  First responders who always seem ready to do what is needed.

They were Jesus for us, teaching us the kind of person you are and leading us to enter into your unconditional love, and to be generous ourselves in welcoming every member of our human family.

As we celebrate the generosity of God in this parable, God’s prodigal goodness can be an affront to our human sense of fairness.  God’s love of sinners is an insult to the pious.  It seems that this is a repeated Scriptural theme:  God’s love of sinner is an insult to the pious.

What better example and illustration of God’s love is there than on the day of our baptism.  In a couple of weeks, I am going to baptize my grand-niece Quinn Grace Kelly.  As a two-month-old baby, Quinn has done nothing to earn God’s grace – sure she’s cute and has brought much joy into the life of her family.  But to this point she’ done no great work for the Church; she isn’t exorbitantly generous; she hasn’t saved any souls; she hasn’t cured a rare disease; she can’t declare her undying obedience to Jesus, and she won’t even say the words laid out in the baptismal liturgy.  If we measure whether she’s earned God’s love and grace by the world’s standards, then unfortunately she wouldn’t make the cut – and you know what many of us probably wouldn’t make the cut either.

Yet, we as a Church declares that this child is beloved of God; we declare that Quinn participates in the life of Jesus Christ, that Jesus loves her – just as much as any of us.  Quinn is marked as Christ’s own forever, just as each one of us who has been baptized was at our baptism.  And there is nothing we can do to make God love us any more or any less.   We are not going to earn any more grace that the unending abundance of grace that God pours upon us each and every day, in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

As we now transition into the mystery of the Eucharist, we assemble around the Lord’s table and we thank God for His forgiveness, mercy, generosity and love.  He has sent us His Son to bring us pardon, to transform us from being isolated individuals into the community of His love, and He gives us the hope of everlasting life.  So, as God’s holy people, we recall that God is merciful and forgiving; God is life-giving and generous; and that God is love.

Have a blessed day!

We as Church are to be a healing, forgiving, reconciling community.

 

 

TWENTY THIRD SUNDAY IN OT  A 2020

We are a church, an assembly of people gathered to do the work of God.  This brings us together around the table of the Lord in the mystery of the Eucharist, and then the Lord sends us out to renew the face of the earth.

The task that faces us in the world in these days of Covid-19 is awesome.  And the only way we can succeed is by staying together, with Jesus in our midst.  Please understand we need to stay together as the community of the baptized and, yet, our love for one another calls us to be very mindful of the importance of mask wearing and socially distancing.  Even as we are socially distant from each other, we still and always will be brothers and sisters to each with Jesus in our midst.  And the clear Gospel message today is that part of being a community of disciples is that we as a community must involve efforts to correct our faults.

The truth of our lives is that we are all sinners.  We are capable of diminishing our community life.

At first glance, today’s Gospel may look like a process to exclude the offending party.  “If your brother sins against you, go and tell his fault between you and him alone.  If he listens to you, you have won your brother.  If he does not listen, take one or two witnesses along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.  If he refuses to listen to them, tell the Church.”

In today’s reading, the entire community is given authority to hold its members to account and  rectify wrongful acts.

What is crucial is understanding today’s Gospel is the process seeks not to exclude but to reconcile and restore the person to the community.  It is all about healing, forgiving, and reconciling.  Make no mistake about who we are as the community of the baptized, our mission is healing, forgiving, and reconciling.

The Gospel is an instruction by Jesus to the disciples about, not confrontation exactly, but about the sacredness of community.  The well-being of others – whether in your family, your workplace, your parish community or wherever – becomes the reason for prophetically attending to the faults of one of the community.

The message is we are better together.  We belong to one another.  We are brothers and sisters to each other.  We are the community of the baptized.  There is no way of over-rating the importance of relationships and community.  Yet, Jesus is very much aware of the frailty among his disciples and future followers.   We need help in acknowledging our faults and needed areas of improvement. 

Now there is an abundance of therapy and workshops in conflict resolutions and the skills of mediation.  You may consider that Matthew’s Gospel may seem a little sketchy in resolving conflicts.  However, on a deeper level, conflict resolutions involve more than skill training in psycho-social skills.  The message of today’s Gospel is that reconciliation is a spiritual activity.  When our psycho-social skills are exercised from our spiritual center, they become all they can be. When the Spirit enters listening skills, the listening becomes deeper and more inclusive.  When the Spirit enters mediation skills, the skills become more respectful.    This presence of the Spirit within the skills signals that the skills are being used for the purpose of reconciliation.

This past Wednesday, we had an all-day staff planning sessions with the staff both of St Joseph’s and Holy Spirit.  We are now a joint staff. We are missioned to collaborate as a joint staff for the sake of better serving and building our faith communities.  As you might expect, changing the way we have always done ministry encounters some resistance.  Collaboration is hard work at times.  Thus, it is essential and critical that our listening and our dialoguing with each other be Spirit-filled.  We become better listeners to each other when we affirm the sacredness of our community life and the Gospel message calls us to be a healing, forgiving and reconciling community.

As seen in the Gospel, correcting the faults of another can be dangerous territory.  When I am the person being criticized, it can be devastating.  And yet, if we are to grow as a staff, if we are to grow as a faith community, if your family is going to be enriched, criticism is important for our growth when the critique is motivated out of care and concern and love.  We all have to acknowledge:  Be patient God isn’t finished with me yet.

Bishop Matano writes:  “The recent news of the tragic death of Mr. Daniel Prude and the visible pain of his family cause a deep sorrow in the hearts of all.  We ask ourselves how we can work together in solidarity for a more just society where tensions are able to be reduced, where conflicts can be settled, where peace prevails, and where life is sacred and reverenced? “

In affirming the sacredness of community -  in our family life, in our Church life, in the streets of our cities, and in all ways we come together with others -- we have to learn to forgive, we have to learn to care, we have to learn that strangers are no longer strangers, that we are brothers and sisters to each other.

What would like for us as Americans if Democrats and Republicans committed themselves to affirm the sacredness of our community life and sought to build up each other?  What would be like if on the streets of our cities, instead of racial violence, we affirmed the dignity and the sacredness of each other;  what would it like in our Church life, if we all prayed together the prayer of Jesus, that they may be one in unity and love.

As we pay attention to our inner journey, we become aware that the spirit of God’s love and healing dwells deep in our hearts.  When we hear with the ears of our heart, we desire to share forgiveness and reconciliation and healing with all people.  When we hear with the ears of our heart, there is no place for pettiness, judgments, ill-will, prejudice, and hatred among us.

We can turn to the second reading today and be very clear:  it is all about love.  “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another.

Have a Blessed Day.