Posted on 09/24/2005 10:05:49 PM PDT by Salvation
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From: Philippians 2:1-11
Unity and Humility
From: Matthew 21:28-32
The Parable of the Two Sons
Sunday, September 25, 2005 Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time |
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Too Proud to Change? |
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09/24/05 |
Jesus was an amazing teacher and a fantastic story-teller. Todays Gospel is a prime example of His ability to craft a story using a common experience and simple images in order to teach the profound truths of our Christian faith. |
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Thanks for posting this. It's always appreciated, but today it's handy, too. I'm a lector this morning.
We are always here! Thanks for your kind words.
Activities:
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September 25, 2005 Twenty-Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Sunday Readings The first reading is taken from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel 18:25-28. A notion very prevalent among the Jews, all through their history, was that the sins of parents were punished in their children. Ezekiel tells his audience that each man is responsible for his own sins. As each man has a free will, the good man may foolishly turn to sin, and likewise the sinner may repent and live a good life. The second reading is from the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippians 2:1-5. St. Paul is urging his new converts to live in the unity of love and mutual charity. Each one must esteem his neighbor as of more importance than himself and be ready to help him in every way. In doing this, they are only imitating their Savior Christ Jesus who although Creator became a creature, though Master he made himself a slave all for love of us. The Gospel is from St. Matthew 21:28-32. This parable was primarily intended to show up the hypocrisy of the chief priests and elders of the Jews, and the perilous position in which they stood in relation to God and heaven. It is, however, a warning against hypocrisy for all time. Lip service of God will not merit heaven. Nominal Christians are not working in the Lord's vineyard. At any moment they may be called from this life, and what defense can they offer the just judge? Will they dare to offer the flimsy excuses with which they try to silence their consciences now: "we didn't realize how sinful we were"; "we were too occupied with family and personal cares to have time for our spiritual duties"; "we were led astray by bad example": "we didn't like to be different from others"; "we were going to put things right"? Who will dare to offer such excuses at the judgment seat? Their utter futility will then be apparent in all its nakedness. However, we are still on earth, and while we are the door of God's mercy is wide open to us. If in the past we said, "I will not go into your vineyard", we still have time to reverse that sinful decision. Not only can we with God's grace turn over a new leaf, but we can completely wipe out the sinful pages of our life's story written up to now. Remember that what God in his mercy did for the tax-collectors and harlots in the parable, the Matthews, the Mary Magdalenes, the Augustines, the Margarets of Cortona, the Matt Talbots and the millions of unknown penitents who are now saints in heaven he can also do for you. We answered the call to God's vineyard by accepting baptism and membership of his Church. If we have grown lax in our fervor and refused to do the tasks allotted to us, we still have time, thanks to God's mercy and patience, to put things right. Today, look into your conscience and see how much of your past life you have given to God and how much you have kept for yourself. If you were called tonight to render an account to the Lord, would the balance sheet be in your favor? Is your corner of the vineyard producing abundant crops, or is it perhaps filling up with weeds, briers and brambles? If the latter, then we will say a heartfelt "Thank you, God, for not calling us to judgment today. We will begin right now to understand our sinful past, so that our corner of your vineyard will be in good order when you do call us. Thank you, Lord, for your mercy. God grant that we shall never abuse it." Excerpted from The Sunday Readings by Fr. Kevin O'Sullivan, O.F.M.
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Eze 18:25-28 / Phil 2:1-11 / Mt 21:28-32 A shy young man fell in love, but he was utterly tongue-tied whenever he was with the girl. A friend offered some advice: "Just memorize some great lines, expressing your total admiration. Something like, 'When I see your face, time stands still.'" It made sense, so for weeks the young man practiced: "When I see your face, time stands still." Finally he was ready. He took her to a romantic restaurant. The lights were low. His eyes met hers and he said, "When I see your face, I, time, uh..." He couldn't remember the words. Again he tried, "Mary, When I see your face, I, er, I mean..." Now he was totally flustered, so in desperation he blurted out, "Mary, your face could stop a CLOCK." We laugh, but there's another part of us that's a little sad when we hear a story like that, because it reminds us of all the things, large and small, that we're still struggling to get right. "After all this time," we say to ourselves, "I'm still stumbling at the same old places in the road. Same old places. Same old cuts and bruises!" It can be mighty discouraging and can even make us want to give up. But before we do that, it might be a good idea to see what God has to say about it. He's trying to catch our attention. He's calling us by name. LISTEN! "I've been walking at your side from the very beginning," he says, "and following your progress with great hope. And that's why I asked Jesus to tell you the story about the two sons. Because you are like the both of them: Sometimes you say 'yes' to me, but then get distracted or tired and your 'yes' accidentally turns into a 'no.' "And sometimes you start with a loud 'NO!' and then your better self takes over and you turn it round into the beginning of a 'yes' maybe a little shakey at first, but a beginning. And that makes me so proud of you, because I know what turnarounds cost. "I know," says the Lord, "that sometimes you don't see the progress you're making. You feel disappointed that you haven't done better, faster. Dear child, I'm not surprised at all. These things take time. I knew that when I made you. "Look at how long it takes ME to make a tree or even a flower! And that's simple when compared to all I'm asking you to do. That will take a lifetime of you and me working together. And even when you reach the end of your pilgrimage, I know in advance that I'll have to help you finish up. And I will do just that, I promise. "So don't be discouraged at how much time everything seems to take Just hold to course. Don't look back or waste time worrying about the past. And know that I am with you and that you are in my heart always!" That is God's word to us! Trust him. God is as good as his word. |
Special Announcement:
Father Robert Altier will speak on
Pope Leo XIII and the St. Michael Prayer
at a special Mass honoring the Archangels and Holy Angels
for the intercession and protection of
our Holy Catholic Church, our families, our children, and our country
Wednesday September 28, 2005
St. Michaels Church, St. Michael, Minnesota
Rosary and Confessions 6:00 pm
Holy Mass 7:00 pm
Special Presentation after the Mass
September 25, 2005 Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Reading I (Ezekiel 18:25-28) Reading II (Philippians 2:1-5)
Gospel (St. Matthew 21:28-32)
In the first reading today, God says through the prophet Ezekiel: You say, The Lords ways are not fair! and then He asks, Is it My ways that are unfair, or is it not your ways that are unfair? We saw last week from the same prophet that the way we think is not the way God thinks. God, Who is the very norm of justice itself, cannot do anything that is unfair. The reason, however, that we might think something is unfair is because what God does is extend mercy to those who repent. If someone has done something, we tend to think that it would be a good thing to take vengeance rather than to forgive, to get even rather than to be merciful. And so when we see God pardoning somebody who has done something to us, or even something much larger, we tend to think that His way is unfair. But it is not. Gods mercy is extended to each and every person; His grace is offered to each and every person; it is simply a question of whether or not we are going to accept it.
Now if we are going to accept Gods grace and seek to conform ourselves to His way, what is it going to look like? Saint Paul makes exceedingly clear exactly what it is going to look like in the second reading today. In his Letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul tells us that each one of us is to have the same mind and the same love to think one thing, he says. To have the same love and the same thoughts can only be truth. He is asking that we would be united in truth, and Jesus Christ is that truth.
There are many ways that one can live the same truth. God can call one person to the single life, another to the religious life, another to the married life, and so on. It matters not what the vocation is. Even within that, we can see that people will be called to different things. Somebody might be called to teach; another person might be called to the contemplative life; someone might be called to be a missionary and another called to work in hospitals and someone to work out in the business world and so on. It does not matter what it is that God is calling you to do, the truth and the love that we have to have is the same. There is not a different truth for somebody who is in Africa as opposed to someone who is in America. Jesus Christ is the truth, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, as Saint Paul says to the Hebrews. He cannot change. The truth does not change and it never will.
If we want to look at things and say, Its about time that the Church gets with it, what that means is we have rejected the truth because the fullness of the truth subsists in the Roman Catholic Church, as the Second Vatican Council says. That is not an arrogant statement; it is a humble statement of the truth that God founded one Church and He promised her the Holy Spirit to lead her into all truth. The Church is the Mystical Person of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is the truth the way, the truth, and the life. Therefore, the fullness of the truth subsists only in the Roman Catholic Church. That does not mean no one else has any truth. There is some truth, but the only place you are going to find the fullness of the truth is in the Catholic Church. So if we are not conformed in our minds and hearts to the teaching of the Church, then we are not conformed to Jesus Christ.
There are some things that the Church teaches that are not always easy for people to accept. The Churchs teaching on things like contraception within marriage, purity outside of marriage, things regarding euthanasia, some of the biomedical practices, some of the moral areas, people balk sometimes at these teachings of the Church, yet we have to remember exactly what happened in the sixth chapter of Johns Gospel when Jesus taught about the Eucharist and how it is required that we eat His flesh and drink His blood. The people said, This is hard, who can endure it? Jesus simply looked at them and said, Do you want to walk away?
No one is going to require you to believe the truth. It is entirely your choice. But we know Who the truth is. And if we are going to say we believe that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, as Saint Paul tells us that we are to do and what we will do for the rest of eternity because every knee in heaven and on the earth and under the earth will bow at the Name of Jesus, and that will be for all eternity, are we willing to begin that process now? If Satan is going to have to bend at the Name of Jesus because Jesus is the truth, because Jesus is God and God is love and therefore He is truth and He is love, then we now need to humble ourselves to realize that we are not the truth, but rather we must conform ourselves to the truth.
This is exactly why Saint Paul goes on to say that each one of us must humble ourselves and think of others as being greater than himself. We do not tend to like that. It is not the American way. Arrogance is the American way. Selfishness is the American way, but it is not the Christian way. We are to be humble. It is pretty easy on one level to do that. All we have to do is look in the mirror. One quick glance in the mirror should dispel very quickly any kind of nonsensical idea that we are somehow pretty wonderful and great. One trip to the confessional ought to take care of the same problem. The difficulty is that most of us do not like to look at ourselves with honesty. We have this immense dignity that is ours as Christian people made in the image and likeness of God and regenerated in Jesus Christ, but we have to balance that with the reality that we have violated our covenant with Christ. We have sinned.
When you read any of the saints, they all say the exact same thing: I myself am the worst of all sinners. Now, remember, some of the saints never even committed a mortal sin, yet they will be right there telling us that they are the worst sinner that has ever walked the face of the earth. Yet we, who are so far from being saints, are going to run around trying to convince ourselves and the rest of the world how great we are. All we are doing is demonstrating that we are a very long way from being saints. If we ask ourselves, How could the saints, since they never committed a mortal sin, say that they are the worst sinner ever? they are not necessarily saying that they have committed the worst sin possible, but what they do is look at their relationship with God and they are horrified that they could have violated God in the manner that they did. They would be the first to say, If you look at the worst sinners, as far as who is doing the most grievous things out there, if those people had been given the grace that I have been given, they would be far holier than I am. And if I had been given the grace that they have been given, I would probably be doing even worse than what they are doing.
Saint Paul then tells his Philippian converts that if they will have this same mind and same love, they will make his joy complete. This is the exact same phrase that Our Lord uses in Saint Johns Gospel, and Saint John uses the exact same words in both his first and second letter. And what is the context of Our Lord using that term? My commandment is this: that you love one another. It is by loving that we will be in the full joy of Christ, that His joy will be ours and our joy will be complete, only if we are united in truth and in love. What good does it do to call oneself a Catholic and not believe what the Church teaches? What good does it do even to call oneself generically Christian if the one commandment that Jesus Christ has given us we refuse to follow?
My commandment to you is this: that you love one another. How many people do we hold grudges against? How many people are we angry at? How many people do we treat poorly? How arrogant are we? How much do we think of ourselves? These things all violate love. Every time that we sin we violate love. If we sin against another person, if we use another person, if we encourage another person to do something sinful, we are not united in love and truth. We may be united with someone in sin, but then we are separate from Christ.
We see the same mystery, then, that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel reading. Are we among the ones who say, No, I will not serve, and turn around and say, Im sorry Ill go? Or are we the ones who are going to say, Oh, yes, Ill go out there, and then we go off and do our own thing? Jesus points out to the chief priests and the elders and the people that they are the ones who have said, I will go, and then they do not. He said, The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of heaven before you because they believed and they turned around at the preaching of John the Baptist. When you saw this, you did not even change your mind even after seeing the tax collectors and prostitutes having a conversion. What about us? How many of us are willing to say, Oh, yes, Ill go, and then look at our lives; our lives are in complete contradiction sometimes to our words. In that case, we are like those chief priests and elders. Oh, we can talk a good talk and we can spew all the religious truth, but we either do not believe it or we do not live it. And it is not that the Jewish people did not believe the truth; they just did not live it. How often do we justify ourselves in refusing to live the truth? because we need to be like everyone else? because If I live the truth, people are going to think Im weird? because If I live the truth Im going to have to change my life? We are pharisaical because we know what the truth is but we refuse to live it. We will beat other people over the head with it, but we will not live it ourselves. There is no humility and there is no charity.
On the other hand, if we will recognize ourselves to be the worst sinner on the face of the earth, then we will humble ourselves. Then we will be like the tax collectors and prostitutes who recognize that they have nothing to boast of because of their sinfulness. All they can do is rejoice in the mercy of God that has been extended to them, and they do not think themselves to be worthy. What did we hear last week in the Gospel? That Jesus came not to call the self-righteous but the sinners. If we do not acknowledge ourselves to be sinful individuals, we have no part in Christ. Now I know that every one of us will say, Of course Im a sinner, but how many of us will actually look honestly at ourselves and say, I am the worst. I am the worst sinner in the world? That does not mean you are doing the worst things possible, as I mentioned earlier; it just means that in relationship to Jesus Christ you recognize the grace He has given you and you recognize your own disobedience to that grace. Therefore, each and every one of us can say, Of all the sinners on the face of the earth, I myself am the worst.
Remember, that is why God chose you: because you are the worst, because you are the least, because you are the most helpless. The ones He chose are the ones who will admit that they cannot do things themselves. We still think that we can, so we still need a little work. We have to be able to acknowledge the truth that we are weak, that we are the worst sinners. The ones who think they can do it themselves, God allows them to try. We need to pray for them that they will have conversions, but in the meantime we need to work on our own selves not to be looking at the speck in our brothers eye but noticing the plank in our own.
We need to strive to be conformed to Jesus Christ. That is exactly what Saint Paul told the Romans: Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by a renewal of your mind. The renewal of your mind is to be renewed in truth, to accept the truth and to live the truth. And a renewal of the heart is to love. Who is Jesus? He is God and God is love; He is the way, the truth, and the life. So He is truth and He is love. Therefore, if you want to possess within yourselves the joy of Jesus Christ, and you want that joy to be complete, there is only one way. That is to be of one mind and one heart, to have one truth and one love. That one truth is Jesus Christ, the fullness of Whom can be found only in the Catholic Church, so it is to conform ourselves to the teaching of the Church. And that one love is Jesus Christ. He is found in His fullness in the Blessed Sacrament. It is to unite ourselves with Him there, to be conformed to Jesus Christ, to live His commandment of love, so that His joy will be in us and our joy will be complete.
* This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.
**St. Michael, Minnesota **
Boy, if I lived close to St. Michael, Minnesota, I would go to hear this lecture!
Sunday, September 25, 2005 Meditation Philippians 2:1-11 He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious. So wrote the Chinese general, Sun Tzu (c. 500 b.c.) in his book The Art of War. This great warriors essays have been studied for centuries around the world, and no matter who reads it, this one teaching stands out: Unity is essential to any military victory. Sun Tzu may have been referring to a military command, but we can apply his words to our spiritual lives as well. The church whose members are united in purpose will be victorious. No one would deny that unity of purpose is the great strength of the Christian community. It is what holds our diverse cultures and viewpoints together. St. Paul went so far as to say that unitybeing one in love, spirit, and purposemade his joy complete (Philippians 2:2). Of course, unity is far easier to talk about than it is to accomplish. So lets try today to address any thoughts of division that are in us. As you receive the Eucharist today, consider who it is that you are receiving. Jesus took on the form of a servant even though he was God. What humility! What obedience! What love! Then, he gave up his life to bring us together as one body. In dying for our reconciliation, Jesus made his Fathers joy complete, and so he was raised from the dead and exalted to the highest place of all. Jesus knew the secret to bringing about unity among his people: humility and obedience. So when you receive Jesus, know that he wants to give you the grace to be like himhumble and obedient. He wants to help you say no to any vain, conceited, or selfish ambitions. He wants to show you how to consider others better than yourself (Philippians 2:3-4). He wants to help you to live in unity with everyone. Why? Because unity is the great witness of his victorious church. Jesus, as I receive you today, transform my heart so that it is just like yours. Ezekiel 18:25-28; Psalm 25:4-9; Matthew 21:28-32 |
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Mt 21:28-32 | ||
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# | Douay-Rheims | Vulgate |
28 | But what think you? A certain man had two sons: and coming to the first, he said: Son, go work to day in my vineyard. | quid autem vobis videtur homo habebat duos filios et accedens ad primum dixit fili vade hodie operare in vinea mea |
29 | And he answering, said: I will not. But afterwards, being moved with repentance, he went. | ille autem respondens ait nolo postea autem paenitentia motus abiit |
30 | And coming to the other, he said in like manner. And he answering said: I go, Sir. And he went not. | accedens autem ad alterum dixit similiter at ille respondens ait eo domine et non ivit |
31 | Which of the two did the father's will? They say to him: The first. Jesus saith to them: Amen I say to you that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the kingdom of God before you. | quis ex duobus fecit voluntatem patris dicunt novissimus dicit illis Iesus amen dico vobis quia publicani et meretrices praecedunt vos in regno Dei |
32 | For John came to you in the way of justice: and you did not believe him. But the publicans and the harlots believed him: but you, seeing it, did not even afterwards repent, that you might believe him. | venit enim ad vos Iohannes in via iustitiae et non credidistis ei publicani autem et meretrices crediderunt ei vos autem videntes nec paenitentiam habuistis postea ut crederetis ei |
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