October 26^th 2014.  Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel: Matthew 22:34-40

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they got together and,
to disconcert him, one of them put a question,
‘Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?’
Jesus said,
‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.

The second resembles it:
You must love your neighbour as yourself.
On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.’

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The first reading language is very threatening. We are to help the widow and orphan, but if we don’t help them then our wives will become widows and our children orphans! This menacing language of the Old Testament Law was a way of expressing the conviction that a life lived contrary to the law led to death. It is helpful to read Jesus’ words in the Gospel in the same way. Jesus tells us to love God totally and to love our neighbour as ourselves. Do we think that these words of Jesus are an optional extra for living a meaningful life? Are we inclined to think that religion or altruism are things that enhance life, but that we can still live a worthwhile existence without them? No! Jesus’ exhortation to love God and neighbour must be understood as activities that are absolutely necessary if we are to have any kind of authentic existence at all. A life that is not built on love of God and neighbour is still biological life, but it is not life in the fullest sense of the word. And love must be total if it is to be authentic. Jesus does not say, “Love God with your heart, mind and soul”; he says “Love God with all your heart, mind and soul”. If my love holds something back for myself, then it is not real love but something conditional, instrumental, ultimately directed towards self. Our love must be something that prevails in all circumstances. It must continue right to the end. Only Jesus can teach us to love in this way and only he can give us the grace to learn to love in this way. Once we have learned this kind of love for God and neighbour, then we have learned to live authentically.

The first reading language seems harsh, but the language is a way of expressing the conviction that there was no life beyond the Law

The first reading from the book of Exodus gives regulations for the welcome and care to be given to the stranger, the poor, the widow and the orphan. This serves as a prelude for the introduction of the greatest commandment in the Gospel. Jesus says. “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: You must love your neighbour as yourself”. The first reading and the Gospel have much in common, but there are also differences that are unsettling. The first reading warns that if we are harsh with the widow or the orphan, then the Lord will hear their cry and our wives will become widows and our children orphans! This vengeful language of the Old Testament Law makes us feel uncomfortable, but there is a certain rationale behind it. The laws and regulations enunciated in the Old Testament books were laws that facilitated life. Beyond these laws there was no life. The threatening language was a way of expressing the deeply held conviction of the people that an existence lived contrary to the Law was an existence that was directed towards death.

When Jesus exhorts us to love God and neighbour, we should interpret this “law” in the light of the Old Testament way of looking at law: loving God and neighbour is absolutely essential for life; anything less will lead to death

With this appreciation of the meaning of the language of the Old Testament, let us re-evaluate Sunday’s Gospel. The Pharisees ask Jesus to state the greatest commandment of the Law. In response, Jesus states the principal commandment and adds to it another commandment that was already considered highly significant in rabbinical thought. What Jesus is doing seems not that novel really, but he makes clear that loving God and loving neighbour is one unified activity. Any approach that focusses exclusively on either one or the other is mistaken. All of this might sound very reasonable and not very original. But once we read the Gospel in the light of the first reading, then Jesus’ message becomes much more radical. In the Old Testament approach, any failure to live up to the demands of the Law led to death. Living the Law led to life. It would be a mistake, therefore, to think that Jesus’ exhortation to love God with all of our heart is a call to something that is not strictly obligatory or necessary, a call to something that we can survive without. The Old Testament language reminds us that we cannot live authentically if we do not love God and neighbour truly. We can live in a biological sense, but the fullness of life is impossible outside of this act of loving God and neighbour. Loving God and neighbour is not a noble option that we may or may not select. It is an absolute necessity.

Love is not authentic if it is not total. Jesus gives us a “law” that leads to life, but it only leads to life if it is total

Jesus does not say, “Love God with your heart, mind and soul”. He says, “Love God with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul”. “All” is a small word, but if love is to be authentic then it must be complete. If I love another only to the extent that it suits me, then that love is only in service of my self. Even if my love seems “almost” complete, the fact that I reserve something for myself indicates that it is an act that is ultimately conditional. If my love is something that I will abandon in certain circumstances, then it is not love at all in the real sense of the word. Loving God is something that is necessary for our happiness and completion. It is not an optional extra that I can do more or less well without. Woe to us if we present love of God as something that simply enhances life! Love of neighbour is the same act as loving God and it is something that we cannot survive without. Our life is not authentic if it is not saturated with love for God and neighbour. We have desperate need to love truly, to love right to the end. This activity constitutes our very being. That is why we must cling to the Lord who teaches us how to love. That is why we need the grace that flows from God’s love of us. We need to enter into relationship with others and ourselves, calling on the help of the Lord. He is the origin of our need to love.

October 19^th 2014.  Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel: Matthew 22:15-21

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL Matthew 22:15-21

The Pharisees went away to work out between them how to trap Jesus in what he said. And they sent their disciples to him, together with the Herodians, to say,
‘Master, we know that you are an honest man and teach the way of God in an honest way,
and that you are not afraid of anyone, because a man’s rank means nothing to you.
Tell us your opinion, then. Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

But Jesus was aware of their malice and replied,
‘You hypocrites! Why do you set this trap for me? Let me see the money you pay the tax with.’
They handed him a denarius and he said, ‘Whose head is this? Whose name?’ ‘Caesar’s’ they replied.
He then said to them,
‘Very well, give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.’

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . Sometimes we read this Gospel and we think that Jesus intends us to split life into the religious sphere and the worldly sphere. We are to keep God and civil matters firmly separate. But this schizophrenic division does not fit in with the Gospel at all! The early Christians were persecuted by the Romans because they would not sacrifice to the Emperors; they would not render onto Caesar that which belonged to God. The ironic thing is that these Christians were not subversive at all - they simply refused to deny the priority of God in their lives. Jesus is not asking us to separate our faith from our dealings with the world. His entire message reveals that our faith is something that lifts up the world. It does not subvert it. Our first priority in life must be to render onto God what is God’s. This entails giving the Lord our hearts, living for him, seeing everything with the eyes of faith and acting accordingly. Once we do that, then our dealings with material things are transformed. To live for the Lord does not require withdrawing from the world. Indeed, withdrawing from the world does not guarantee that we live for the Lord at all. Even when we enter a monastery, our material attitudes enter with us. Our primary focus must be to give to God that which belongs to God. My heart belongs to God. My sole concern must be to give that to him.

A clever attempt to trap Jesus. Does Jesus’ response create a schizophrenic split between religion and the material world?

In Sunday’s Gospel, the Pharisees set a trap for Jesus, asking him if they ought to pay taxes or not. There seems to be no good answer to this question. If Jesus tells them not to pay, then he sets himself against the civil authorities and places himself in danger of legal sanction. Equally, if he tells them that they must pay the tax, then he appears as a mouthpiece of the Romans and risks rejection by the people. There seems to be no escape for Jesus, but he responds with a third way that is usually translated as rendering onto Caesar what is Caesar’s and onto God what is God’s.

But in the first reading God’s work is done by Caesar!

The first reading, however, gives a completely different perspective on this issue. Isaiah tells us of the liberation by Cyrus of the people of Israel from slavery and exile. Cyrus is not a believer, but he is the chosen instrument of God who issues the edict that sets the Israelites free. There may be no direct personal relationship between Cyrus and God, but, according to the faith interpretation of the Israelites of their own story, this foreign ruler is given a place in history by the Lord. Curiously, Cyrus combines the work of Caesar and the work of God!

Christians are not against Caesar but they will not give to Caesar the fundamental thing that belongs to God – their hearts

The early emperors persecuted Christianity extensively, even though they could not sustain the charge that the Christians were a subversive element of the population. What was objectionable about Christians was the fact that they would not make Caesar their priority. They would not sacrifice to the emperor. They would not give to Caesar that which rightfully belonged to God. The message of this Gospel reading is not simply about the need to separate the religious and the civil spheres. The first reading demonstrates how a pagan political entity can be used as an instrument of the providence of the Lord. The challenge is not simply that of withdrawing from the world and giving ourselves over to God, leaving Caesar to his own devices. No, what we must do is that which Christians have always done – be in the world but not be of the world. The Gospel is not challenging us to be in a particular place; it is challenging us to be for someone in particular – the Lord rather than Caesar.

The Gospel challenges us to turn away from worldliness by making God our priority in all of our dealings with Caesar

The questions we should continue to ask ourselves are: “Who do I belong to? To what is my heart attached?” In all our dealings with the world, even our dealings with Caesar, what matters is that we belong to the Lord. The relationship with him must not be compromised for any reason. A mistaken interpretation of the Gospel can lead to a schizophrenic attitude towards reality in which we place God against Caesar. Instead, what we must focus on is belonging to the Lord whilst living in the midst of things. We might think that the monastic life enables us to subtract ourselves from life and live totally for the Lord. But when we enter the monastic life, material things enter with us and affect all of our relationships. Even if we think we are out of the context of Caesar, it is still a challenge to belong to God. The Gospel is exhorting us to evaluate things in the light of the Holy Spirit. We don’t need to reject the world, but welcome it with the love of God. As St Paul says, the man of spirit and the man of flesh are not two separate people. Either we obey our passions or we obey the Spirit, but when we obey the Spirit we must do so with all of our flesh. We must remain the property of the Lord, prioritizing him, invoking him, seeking him in everything we do, behaving as one who loves the Lord and is loved by him.

12^th October 2014. Twenty-Eight Sunday in Ordinary Time  

Gospel: Matthew 22:1-14

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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GOSPEL:                                    Matthew 22:1-14

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding. He sent his servants to call those who had been invited, but they would not come. Next he sent some more servants. “Tell those who have been invited”, he said, “that I have my banquet all prepared, my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready. Come to the wedding.” But they were not interested: one went off to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his servants, maltreated them and killed them. The king was furious. He despatched his troops, destroyed those murderers and burnt their town. Then he said to his servants, “The wedding is ready; but as those who were invited proved to be unworthy, go to the crossroads in the town and invite everyone you can find to the wedding”.

So these servants went out on to the roads and collected together everyone they could find, bad and good alike; and the wedding hall was filled with guests. When the king came in to look at the guests he noticed one man who was not wearing a wedding garment, and said to him, “How did you get in here, my friend, without a wedding garment?” And the man was silent. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth”. For many are called, but few are chosen.’

THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . A king invites people to a wedding feast but the people are too busy to attend. Invitations are then sent out to people on the periphery of life, people who are in cul-de-sacs with nowhere else to go. Often it is only when we find ourselves in a cul-de-sac that we accept the invitation of Christ. Often it is only when we have exhausted all other possibilities that we finally become open to the invitation of God. The Eucharistic gathering is a wedding feast to which God invites us. Do we realize what joyful occasions they are? Do we go through Mass with a “Sunday frown”? At the end of the Gospel we find a parable within a parable. A man is expelled from the feast because he is not wearing the correct garment. What is this correct garment? God offers us a garment but we often reject it. This is the garment of forgiveness, reconciliation, conversion to a new way of life. This Gospel challenges us to be aware that we have been invited to a joyful feast; and that it is well worth our while attending. In order to attend, however, we are invited to allow ourselves to be changed, to put on the new garment so that we may celebrate the feast appropriately. The will of God for us is a joyous banquet. It is not a weight upon our shoulders, but an offer of a gift be embraced. The Eucharistic feast is not a sacrifice on our part, but a sacrifice on the part of God. It is something that makes our lives beautiful, a unique moment of union with Him.

An invitation that is offered to those who have nowhere else to go

This story of a wedding feast tells of invitations being sent by a king to people who decline to attend. Some are too busy looking after their own affairs; others become annoyed and angry at the request, and go so far as to kill the servants who bore the invitation. The king reacts violently, killing those who had mistreated his servants and burning their city. He then says, "'The wedding feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, to the crossroads and invite whoever you find".

            This expression, "crossroads", makes one think immediately of street junctions, but the original Greek word refers to the place where the street finishes. In ancient writings, certain of the Church fathers placed great emphasis on the significance of this expression. The king's invitation is being issued to those who are at the end of the road; those who are stuck in a cul-de-sac; those who are in a situation that offers no hope of escape. The invitation is thus being offered to the very ones who appear to be unworthy to be in the exalted presence of the bridegroom.

            Often, in order to be willing to accept the invitation of Christ, it is necessary to be at the end of one's wits; to have exhausted all of one's own efforts. Often, it is only when we have tried everything else without success that, finally, we become open to considering the alternative offered by God.

How willingly do WE  accept the invitation to the wedding feast of the Eucharist?

These considerations are interesting in themselves, but then we are confronted with a second "parable within a parable" - the story of the man who enters the feast without the proper attire. In both cases, we must try to understand what the wedding feast is symbolic of. Who are those who consider their own affairs to be more important than a wedding feast? A wedding is something joyful, something wonderful that anyone would love to attend. It is not by accident that the Gospel of John begins with the story of a wedding feast. Much of the folklore in various cultures is centred on things that happen at wedding feasts. Weddings - celebrations of married love - are at the centre of life. They are joyous events, and this is especially true of the feast to which God invites us. God wishes us to leave aside our own plans, our own affairs, and to attend his wedding feast. Our own affairs are stressful, full of mediocrity, and of temporary value only. The feast of the Son of God, which is celebrated especially in the Eucharist - the feast of the Lamb referred to in the Book of Revelation - is the feast of paradise, the greatest and most beautiful feast of all.

Do we wear the "Sunday frown" at our Eucharistic gatherings?

But sometimes in our Eucharistic assemblies, we are there with long faces and bored expressions, glancing at our watches every five minutes! This shows that we have not entered into the mystery of union with God; that we simply do not appreciate what we are celebrating. We are inclined to think that the quicker that Mass finishes the better, because our own affairs and projects are much more important, and we must return to them as soon as possible. This attitude is mistaken. To be invited to the Sunday Eucharist is an invitation to rejoice. It is a wedding feast, not a waste of time! God, in his wonderful plan, invites us to this feast as friends of the bridegroom, that we may rejoice with him. We have reason to grieve only if we fail to turn up. Why then do we so often wear the "Sunday frown" in our Eucharistic gatherings?

We must change if we are to celebrate the wedding feast appropriately

Let us consider now the man who is not dressed in the correct wedding attire. If the guests have really been gathered from the backstreets; if they are all desperate down-and-outs with nowhere else to go; if they are, as the text says, "the good and bad alike", then in what way is this man dressed inappropriately? In order to understand what this passage is referring to, we must understand the nuptial traditions of Hebrew culture. In the Jewish wedding feasts, it was the custom for the bridegroom to provide a garment for the guests as they entered the wedding feast. This guest, then, must be understood to be a man who has refused to change attire. The word "abitus" – habit – refers to one's clothing, but also to one's pattern of behaviour. To wear different clothing, or to have changed one's garment, often involves washing a garment. It is God who, above all, cleanses our garment and dresses us in new attire.

            The guest in the parable is someone who wishes to enter into the feast of God without abandoning his attachment to what he wore before. Wearing his old garment represents the retention of his old attitudes and patterns of behaviour. If someone comes to a wedding celebration wearing a tracksuit, then we tend to feel indignant that they have shown up in such inappropriate dress. When someone comes to a feast, we expect them to dress suitably. And to be at the feast of Christ similarly requires the wearing of a proper garment. It is impossible to be truly with Christ and not to have changed one's old attire completely.

The "Sunday frown" on our faces is a sign that we have not changed garment

We must remember that the gift of God is not something that is imposed upon us. It is something, rather, that can only be accepted freely. Why do we treat the Eucharistic gathering like a funeral rather than a feast? Because we have not changed and taken on the new garment that is appropriate for participating in this celebration. This is something that should be done before we enter the banquet. It is the just practice of the Church to request that one be in the grace of God before approaching the holy Eucharist. The forgiveness of sins, the new garment that is offered to us, is a gift that we receive from God. Without any shadow of doubt, it is necessary to go through the stage of changing the garment before we are ready to enter into the fullness of the wedding feast. In the process of adult baptism, the adult is required to change their name at the moment of baptism. They are challenged to change their very person, and they are asked to undress and put on a white garment. It is only while wearing this white garment that they are admitted to the sacrament of the Eucharist.

A parable that challenges us to view the Eucharist as a joyous feast that is wonderful to attend, and that requires a change of habit on our part.

In the same way, this parable challenges us to be aware that we have been invited to a sumptuous feast; that there is great joy to be experienced; and that it is well worth our while attending. In order to attend, however, we are invited to allow ourselves to be changed, to put on the new garment so that we may celebrate the feast appropriately. The will of God for us, the Christian adventure to which we are called, the sacramental life in which we are invited to participate, is a joyous banquet. It is not a weight upon our shoulders, but an offer of a gift be embraced. The Eucharistic feast is not a sacrifice on our part, but a sacrifice on the part of God. It is something that makes our lives beautiful. It is a time of festival, full of nuptial joy, a unique moment of union with Him.

October 5^th 2014. TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: Matthew 21:33-43

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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GOSPEL:                             Matthew 21:33-43

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people :
‘Listen to another parable. There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard; he fenced it round, dug a winepress in it and built a tower; then he leased it to tenants and went abroad. When vintage time drew near he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his servants, thrashed one, killed another and stoned a third. Next he sent some more servants, this time a larger number, and they dealt with them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them. “They will respect my son” he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, “This is the heir. Come on, let us kill him and take over his inheritance.” So they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They answered, ‘He will bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will deliver the produce to him when the season arrives’.
Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures:

It was the stone rejected by the builders that became the keystone.
This was the Lord’s doing and it is wonderful to see?

I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you
and given to a people who will produce its fruit.’

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . Jesus tells the parable of the tenants who refuse to give the due fruits of their labour to the vineyard owner. They even kill the owner’s son in order to gain permanent possession of the vineyard. At the end of the parable, Jesus asks his listeners what will happen to those tenants. The listeners reply, “They will be killed violently and the vineyard will be given to other tenants who will produce the right fruits in due season”. This Gospel might sound harsh to our ears. Where is God’s mercy? Will we have a miserable end if we do not produce the goods that God expects from us? Shouldn’t God tolerate our waywardness and still bestow salvation and happiness upon us? Don Fabio responds by saying that the Gospel is not harsh but honest. Real love involves an aspect of purification and pruning. We have attitudes and habits that are incompatible with the Gospel. God wishes us to be rid of these habits, and this requires a painful process of cauterization. God’s love is not some sort of warm, fuzzy feeling that says “Yes” to everything. God wishes to bestow on us a wonderful vineyard in which we can bear fruit that will last. If we persist in pursuing our self-centered interests, then we simply cannot produce the fruits that God wishes us to produce. This is not harshness but truth. The fruits that we could have produced will be produced by other “tenants” who are not bogged down in the self-centered mire in which we are wallowing. The problem is that we think we can live the “faith” whilst still remaining masters of our own destiny. We think that the vineyard is ours, something that exists to produce fruit for ourselves. But the vineyard is not ours! It belongs to the Lord! Our lives are not our own. We must be pruned and cut by the Lord until we learn the inestimable joy of being able to produce fruit for the Lord.

The New Testament parable seems even harsher than the Old Testament one! But is “harsh” the correct word?

This Sunday the first reading and the Gospel fit together perfectly. The same story is told in the New Testament as in the Old. We might expect that Jesus would soften the tone of his parable with respect to the Old Testament version. Isaiah tells the story of the love of the Lord for his vineyard. The land is given every sort of care and attention in order to produce the most wonderful fruit, but the harvest turns out to be a disaster. The Lord then speaks to the keepers of the vineyard. “I have given you everything, and what do I receive in return? I expected justice but receive the spilling of blood. I looked for righteousness but hear the cries of the oppressed”. In the Gospel, Jesus addresses a similar parable to the Pharisees and chief priests, to the elite of the people who have been cultivated in the ways of God. They have been blessed with the gifts of heaven, in the same way that the vineyard keepers were given a vineyard complete with a fence, a winepress and a tower. When the master asks for the fruit of the vineyard, the response is violence and bloodshed. This is the story of Israel who rejected the prophets and messengers of God. In the parable, Jesus recounts how the tenants also reject the son of the landowner. The son is put to death so that the tenants might take possession of the vineyard. Sometimes people think that the Old Testament presents the harsher face of God, whilst the New Testament focuses more on his mercy. But this is not a complete picture. The development from the Old Testament to the New cannot be summed up in such simplistic terms.

Love involves pruning, cauterizing, and purifying that which is incompatible with true love

God reveals himself to us in a gradual way, and we come to know him gradually as he progressively reveals his face. But God does not change character as we progressively come to know him! We speak to children in one way, to adolescents in another way, and to adults in a still different way. God has revealed himself to humanity from the beginning as a merciful God. In the fullness of time, his Son is born of a woman and achieves our redemption. But the apparent harshness at the end of Jesus’ parable leaves us shocked. Jesus asks his listeners what the owner will do with those tenants who have behaved so badly. The listeners reply, “He will bring them to a miserable end and give the vineyard over to others who will produce real fruit”. And Jesus agrees. Those tenants will lose their vineyard and the stone that had been rejected will become the corner-stone. This is not a comfortable parable for any of us! It is a tough lesson that we must take on board seriously because there is an aspect of love that prunes, cauterizes, purifies. Love is incompatible with certain things. Love sometimes involves saying “No!” in a determined fashion. The capacity for true love requires the ability to distance oneself from certain things. Love is not some kind of warm, fuzzy feeling that assents to everything. Real love involves passion and single-mindedness. Helping other people to grow necessitates being able to say “No” to them in certain situations.

The apparent harshness of the Gospel is the simple “No!” of love

This Gospel contains within it the “No!” of love. There is a particular self-centered attitude that God wishes to counter in us. Our refusal to bear fruit is not something that God can sit easy with. There is a very common trend even among those who consider themselves to be “religious”, and this is the tendency to believe that we can have the faith and still remain the masters of our own destiny. We are inclined to think that the vineyard is ours and we can use it for the kind of self-centered fruits that suit us. But the vineyard is not ours! The vineyard belongs to the Lord and our lives are not our own! We are called to bear fruit and to do so we must be pruned and cut, as the parable of the vine in the Gospel of John tells us. There are certain attitudes and habits engrained within us that must be rooted out and rejected. Quite often we are reluctant to allow God to be placed at the centre of our lives, and this reluctance can lead to the loss of the vineyard that the Lord wishes to bestow on us. We must not be ambivalent towards such incompatible attitudes. This Gospel calls on us to bear fruit. That which impedes us from bearing fruit cannot be given a place in our lives. If we continue to harbour such incompatible habits and attitudes, then we must resign ourselves to losing all that the Lord wishes to bestow upon us. This is not harshness. It is simply the truth. 

September 28^th 2014.  Twenty-Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel: Matthew 21:28-32

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL Matthew 21:28-32

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: ‘What is your opinion?
A man had two sons. He went and said to the first, “My boy, you go and work in the vineyard today”.
He answered, “I will not go”, but afterwards thought better of it and went.
The man then went and said the same thing to the second who answered, “Certainly, sir”, but did not go.
Which of the two did the father’s will?’ ‘The first’ they said.
Jesus said to them,
‘I tell you solemnly, tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you.
For John came to you, a pattern of true righteousness, but you did not believe him, and yet the tax collectors and prostitutes did.
Even after seeing that, you refused to think better of it and believe in him.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . Don Fabio’s homily this week is full of hope for those of us who are dismayed by our natural disinclination to work in the Lord’s vineyard! A father asks his two sons to go and work in the vineyard. One says “Yes sir!” but does not go. The other says “No!” but changes his mind and goes. Both sons make an initial instinctive response, but the real person is something different to the instinctive response. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that our natural responses sum up who we are! We are much more than instincts and sentiments. Life is too beautiful and important to be lived merely as a series of instinctive or reactionary responses. If we take the time to reflect and contemplate on our lives, then we begin to discover a person within us that is not the individualistic, self-oriented character on the surface. We begin to discover that child of God who, on the surface, might instinctively refuse to work in the vineyard, but deep down is a loyal and willing servant of the Lord. The Pharisees refused to consider that they might be in need of conversion. We must act like the son who is not afraid to reconsider his response to the Lord. Our instinctive reaction to the Lord’s call is not the primary thing. What is important is the more profound response that emerges from us when we take the time to contemplate things. This is the response that unveils the kind of person that we really are. The Father is asking us to enter his vineyard! Don’t worry about our initial sentiments and reactions! Let us take the time to reflect on this call and make the greatest response that we are capable of!

Is the Lord unjust if he makes the effects of sin reverberate in a person’s life?

It is important to understand the first reading and the Gospel in their proper contexts. Otherwise we risk missing some important aspects of these texts. In the first reading, the Lord answers those who claim that his ways are unjust. The passage which recounts the giving of the Decalogue had said that the Lord visits the fault on the unjust man’s descendants to the third and fourth generation. This sounds terrible to our ears and makes us question the justice of the Lord. But the passage does not say that the Lord punishes the unjust man’s descendants; rather he visits the fault on the man’s descendants. To “visit” in this sense means to make the fault present. And we cannot doubt that the effects of sin have reverberations that make themselves felt in the unjust man’s family and environment. Situations of deceit, sin and destruction have profound effects on our children and on our spiritual children.  God wishes to break this cycle by which the repercussions of sin multiply themselves. Even the most private of sins lead to our degeneration and impoverish our relations with others. Sometimes the discomfort and trouble that our sins provoke is the medicine that impels us to consider the state of our lives. This chain reaction by which the effects of sins are transmitted from generation to generation is well recognized by psychologists, but the issue is how to break the chain. We must welcome God’s visitation of the effects of our fault into our lives! This visitation attempts to awaken us to reflect on the state of our lives and stimulate us to change. The theme of the Gospel is all about this life-transforming change. Sometimes we refuse to go and work in the vineyard of the Lord, but the reverberations of our refusal makes us change our mind and go.

It is important not to limit ourselves to the natural responses that arise in our hearts. When we take time to reflect and contemplate on our lives, we become capable of loyal, willing responses to the Lord’s call.

In the Gospel parable, a father asks his two sons to go and work in the vineyard. One says that he will not, but later changes his mind and goes. The other says “Yes sir!” but does not go. The human being always has the capacity to change. Often we respond with immediate impulses that are individualistic and self-directed. But it is the “second” response we make that is often more significant and life-changing. These responses are made when we have digested the situation more fully. Such responses unveil the sort of person we are at the core. We often say “Yes sir!” because we are anxious to please others, but when the going gets tough we can easily falter. Chapter 7 of Matthew’s Gospel tells of those who say “Lord, Lord” but do not do the will of the Father. When we follow a path, what counts is where the path leads to. We can have a certain attitude towards something, but the important thing is our resultant behaviour towards that thing. Before responding to something, it is often better to reflect at length and to make a response that is consonant with what we are actually going to do with respect to that thing. Life is not something that should be responded to impulsively. It is important not to be dominated by our instinctive mode of reaction. Spontaneity and sincerity are very important qualities in many situations, but it is not true that I as a person can be equated simply with those impulses that occur naturally in my heart. I am not just instinct: I am also reason and spirit. I am my authentic self when, repentant, I go into the master’s vineyard to work. Let us not limit ourselves to our impulsive responses! Let us seek the greatest response that we are capable of! This requires reflection and calm. Quick, frenetic responses to life’s situations are not the best way to go. In reflection and calmness, we can discover the true selves that lie deep within our being. We can discover the loyal and willing child of God in our hearts that is far different to the impulsive and faltering person on the surface.

The son who says “No!” but then goes into the vineyard, is a son who is open to conversion. We too must open ourselves to conversion by delving more deeply into the profundity of our hearts, refusing to be dominated by natural impulses.

The context of the Gospel was the questioning on the part of the Scribes and Pharisees of the authority of Jesus. In response, Jesus asked them to say where the authority of John the Baptist had come from. John the Baptist was the prophet who had proclaimed the Lord’s radical call to conversion. The Pharisees and Elders had refused the Lord’s gift to them of John the Baptist because they didn’t accept that their lives required conversion. The son who first refused to go into the vineyard but later changed his mind, is a person who manages to do what the Pharisees were unable to do.  He looks at the state of his own life and asks himself what needs to be changed. We must never make our own thoughts and reactions absolute. We must not give undue prominence to our instincts and sentiments. When we delve more deeply into the profundity of our hearts, we become capable of the response that is appropriate for the profound, hidden mystery that is God.

September 24^th 2014. Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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GOSPEL:                                   Matthew 20:1-16

Now the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner going out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard. He made an agreement with the workers for one denarius a day, and sent them to his vineyard. Going out at about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place and said to them, “You go to my vineyard too and I will give you a fair wage”. So they went. At about the sixth hour and again at about the ninth hour, he went out and did the same. Then at about the eleventh hour he went out and found more men standing round, and he said to them, “Why have you been standing here idle all day?” “Because no one has hired us” they answered. He said to them, “You go into my vineyard too”.

In the evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his bailiff, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last arrivals and ending with the first”. So those who were hired at about the eleventh hour came forward and received one denarius each. When the first came, they expected to get more, but they too received one denarius each. They took it, but grumbled at the landowner. “The men who came last” they said “have done only one hour, and you have treated them the same as us, though we have done a heavy day’s work in all the heat.” He answered one of them and said, “My friend, I am not being unjust to you; did we not agree on one denarius? Take your earnings and go. I choose to pay the last comer as much as I pay you. Have I no right to do what I like with my own? Why be envious because I am generous?”

Thus the last will be first, and the first, last.’

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The first reading from Chapter 55 of Isaiah tells us that God’s ways are utterly different to our ways. We find that again in the parable from the Gospel. A landowner hires workers at different times of the day, but gives them all a full day’s wage, even those who only worked for one hour. Is the landowner unjust? No he is not unjust, for he gave those who worked all day long a full day’s wage. The landowner is simply someone who gives gratuitously and unconditionally. Human logic works according to the principle of the little weighing scales that we all have inside our heads. If people are mean to us then we should be mean to them. If people ask us for something, then they should be willing to do something for us. But this is not the logic of God. And neither is it our logic when we follow the way of the Lord. Good spouses, parents and friends do not follow the logic of the weighing scales. They bestow love on those who have done little or nothing to deserve it. Sometimes we feel envious of people who convert at the last minute and are “saved”. We feel aggrieved that we have worked all day in the vineyard of the Lord and end up receiving no more or no less than this salvation. But this bitterness arises from the fact that we are thinking according to human logic. Do we really think that we are working diligently for the Kingdom? How wrong we are! We do little and what we do is done badly! We are all like the workers who work for only an hour and are still given salvation! And how wrong we would be to feel bitter for being hired early in the vineyard of the Lord. Just as it is a joy for a father to have employment and bring home bread for the family, so it should be a joy for us to know the Lord early and to discover the meaning of our existence. And, anyway, do we think that the Lord can give a lesser type of salvation to those who convert on their deathbeds and a more substantial salvation to those who convert early in life? The Lord cannot give a half denarius! He cannot half love us, or half save us! Blessed be the Lord who loves us wholly and gratuitously no matter how little we accomplish in his vineyard!

The key to looking anew at the state of our lives: the way we do things is not God’s way of doing things

The first reading is the beautiful passage from the fifty-fifth chapter of the prophet Isaiah.  “My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways; as the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways above your ways”. What a marvellous key for gaining a new perspective on our lives! We are inclined to think that it is right and normal to follow our own ways. If someone somewhere decides to follow the ways of God, then we think that this is a sort of optional “extra” that we may or may not wish to embrace ourselves. But this is simply a wrong way of looking at things. We were made to follow the ways of God and we will not be happy if we continue to follow our own ways. The Lord created us that we might open ourselves to faith and grace. The ways we customarily follow are ways in which God is fundamentally ignored. These ways lead to emptiness and futility, if not directly to evil itself. It is almost worse if they do not lead to obvious inconsistencies, because then we can fail to realize that such paths go around in circles and lead nowhere.

The landowner in the parable is strange, but he is not unjust

The radical difference between God’s ways and our ways is an interpretative key for understanding the Gospel parable of the workers in the vineyard. This peculiar landowner begins by acting in a normal way but finishes by behaving in a way that is almost incomprehensible. He hires workers at different times of the day, even an hour before sunset, but in the end he pays them all the same wage! It seems absurd to us that people who worked vastly different hours should receive the same pay, and this injustice is expressed by the grumbling of the workers who were hired from the beginning. But the word “injustice” is actually incorrect here. As the landowner himself says, the problem is not that he has been unjust with the first group of workers – they still received one denarius each, which was the classic wage for a day’s work. The problem is that the landowner went beyond the dictates of justice and gave the others more than they deserved.

Human justice works according to the logic of perfect balance. But genuine relationships do not follow this logic at all

This fact overturns our system of logic which is based on the notion that a person should be given what they have earned. We have no natural concept of going beyond what is just, what is earned. We evaluate everything in life using the little scales that we have in our minds. And in fact the image of a scales is a symbol of human justice. Everything must be balanced out evenly. Accounts must return perfectly. “To each what he deserves” is an adage found in many human societies. This is how things work – or is it? God’s way work according to grace, that which is unconditionally given. And we function according to grace as well, when we are implicitly following the Lord. If a friendship was based upon each partner in the friendship giving only that which he had received from the other, then the relationship would not last very long. Genuine human relationships require bestowing on each other a benevolence that is undeserved. Imagine a marriage in which the spouses only give to each other that which is earned, in which one spouse says, “If you do this for me, then I will do that for you.” Imagine a parent who responds to a child with merely that which the infant has merited. Parenthood demands filling a child’s life with undeserved benevolence, surprises, treats, presents, things that are given gratuitously. Otherwise how can the child come to know the meaning of love, acceptance, tenderness? Who among us can live without this “something more”, this extra that is undeserved? The ways of God do not involve weighing up the person and giving him what he has earned. God is not a distributor of goods in a communitarian fashion. He is a father who brings history along according to the principle of generosity.

Do we think that we are working diligently in the vineyard of the Lord? How wrong we are! We are all relatively idle! All of us are like the workers who do only one hour and still get the full reward.

God has a coin to give us at the end of the day, and that day is our life. The sun will go down and the Lord will give out the coin that is his Kingdom, his goods, his reward. If one of our brothers and sisters turns to God at the very end of their lives, then God will save them. Does this bother us? We must look at things according to the paternal viewpoint of God. Think of the workers in the parable who are assumed at the end of the day. Their response to the landowner when he asked why they were doing nothing was “Because nobody has hired us.” For a father of a family to be left without work meant to return home without the denarius necessary to buy bread for the family. By giving a full denarius to those who had been assumed for only part of the day, the landowner gave these workers the possibility of feeding their family properly. Today we are all too conscious of the dramatic tragedy of unemployment. But as far as the Kingdom is concerned, all of us are relatively underemployed. We work little in God’s vineyard. The work we do is all too inadequate. But God rewards us anyway even for the hour that we do. God is knocking at the door, offering us this precious work. When we cease to be lazy with regard to his will, then life becomes beautiful and we are rewarded with the Kingdom of Heaven.

God cannot give a half denarius. He cannot give us half his love or half the kingdom, even if we only do half a day’s work in his vineyard. God always gives wholly and completely

God cannot give us less than his entire love. He does not half love us, nor give us half of his Kingdom, nor quarter of his Kingdom. When he gives, he gives completely. The challenge for us is to work in his vineyard and to begin working as soon as possible. If we end up working all day, sure, there is the heat. But we have found a position doing the work that we were made to do, just as the father of the family rejoices when he has found the employment that will put bread on the family table. When we work for the Kingdom then we are blessed for we have found the Lord, we have found the meaning of our existence.

September 14^th 2014.  The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Gospel: John 3:13-17

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL John 3:13-17

Jesus said to Nicodemus:

No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who came down from heaven,
the Son of Man who is in heaven;
and the Son of Man must be lifted up
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so that everyone who believes
may have eternal life in him.
Yes, God loved the world so much
that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost
but may have eternal life.
For God sent his Son into the world
not to condemn the world,
but so that through him the world might be saved.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The forty years that Israel spent in the desert represents the spiritual journey in which I cease to be the reference point of my own existence and entrust myself to God. In the first reading, the people of Israel follow their own path and end up in a region of serpents. We too follow serpent-infested paths when we go our own way. How are we to undertake this journey away from a focus on ourselves and towards a life oriented utterly to God? It is the Cross that teaches us to abandon ourselves to the Lord. Often it is the incomprehensibility and pain of life that becomes the occasion for us to entrust ourselves to Jesus. It is in moments of desolation that I am challenged to either reject the existence of God or make him the meaning of my existence. When we give ourselves into the hands of God in our tribulation and pain, He is able to work wonders. The Cross becomes the scalpel with which God forms us into a new creation.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross brings the centrality of the Cross into relief

This year the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross falls providentially on Sunday. Most years it falls on a weekday and the majority of the Catholic faithful do not have the opportunity to celebrate it. The Cross is a central element in our faith. Without a shadow of a doubt, we cannot hope to understand the nature of salvation if we do not pass through this gateway of the Cross. The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross was instituted in order that we might bring the importance of the Cross into central relief.

The forty years in the desert represents the journey in each human heart towards total entrustment to God

The first reading comes from one of the first five books of the Old Testament, the Book of Numbers. The book narrates the events in the desert after the people of Israel escape from Egypt. This period of forty years in the desert had paradigmatic status for the Israelites: it became emblematic of the interior spiritual journey of the person. The time in the desert was a time of transformation and it has lessons that must be applied today to our daily existence. The escape from Egypt required little time, relatively speaking, and consisted in the unfolding story of the ten plagues, the night of the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea. The Hebrew teachers used to say that just one night sufficed to take Israel out of Egypt, but to take Egypt out of the hearts of the Israelites took forty years. And that is how it is with all of us. It is easy to change our external circumstances, but a much more complicated thing to change our hearts.

The period in the desert represents the process of conversion. How can we escape from the prison that consists in the fact that we have made ourselves the focus of our own existence?

The time in the desert is filled with tests and temptations. Forty years represents an entire generation in chronological terms. In Old Testament times, forty years was the period required not only to reach adulthood, but to become a grandparent and to enter the stage of life when one became dependent on others. During the forty years in the desert, most of those who had escaped from Egypt would have died, and only their children would have entered the Promised Land. The time in the desert thus represents the transformation from the “old man” to the “new man”, the person prior to baptism and the person after baptism, the person before conversion and the person afterwards. What must the person prior to baptism overcome in order to change the old man into the new? What is required if one is to become a child of God who knows how to live in the Promised Land? The person must overcome the limits imposed on him by the self-referential nature of his prior existence. He must escape from the prison that consists in the fact that the person has made himself the measure and goal of his own existence.

As soon as we begin to follow our own paths, then we enter the region of serpents

In the first reading, the people do not understand why God has made them undertake this arduous journey and they begin to grumble. This account, which might seem rather archaic at first sight, has much to tell us about our own situations. When we begin to make our own vision absolute, failing to entrust our lives to God’s providence, then we too are bitten by the serpent. We are eaten alive by something that takes us into a kind of death. As soon as we begin to trust our own intelligence above that of God, presuming to tell God how one should journey through life, then we find ourselves with the burden of our lives upon our shoulders. The Sinai desert is composed of a series of identical hills, one after the other, and it is difficult to find the way through them because you can go around in circles a thousand times. The people of Israel decided to follow their own path and ended up among serpents. As soon as we begin to rely on ourselves for the direction we take in life, then we finish up among serpents.

The people are saved when they raise their eyes to behold God’s solution to their predicament

The act by which the Israelites are saved is genuinely strange. Moses raises a serpent made of bronze. The people must renounce their own intelligence, their own sense of which direction to take, and raise their eyes to gaze on the very thing that is afflicting them. In this way the Israelites are challenged to gaze upon the work of the Lord, on the thing that the Lord commands them to look at, and as a result they are saved.

The Cross is the place where we learn to entrust ourselves to God, where we decide that God exists and is the meaning of our existence. When we entrust ourselves to God by embracing the Cross, then we are transformed by him into a new creation

All of this becomes concrete in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are saved through the absurdity of the Cross. We go around in circles trying to avoid the Cross, but it is the place where we learn to entrust ourselves to God. The things that we find incomprehensible, the things that crucify us, these are the concrete situations of our existence where we consign ourselves into the hands of God. The Crosses that present themselves to us are the places where we decide whether God exists or not, whether the Father is the one to which we must entrust ourselves or not. If we abandon ourselves into His hands as Jesus did, then we allow ourselves to be formed by Him. The Cross is often the scalpel of God that transforms us into new creatures. When we give ourselves into the hands of God in tribulation and pain, He is able to work wonders! This is not something that we can justify rationally. Either we decide to entrust ourselves or we do not. Either we abandon ourselves into His hands one day, or we continue to follow our own paths that are infested with serpents. The love of God for us is only comprehended when we entrust ourselves to Him totally. Jesus loved us to the extent of delivering himself into our hands. He awaits until we do the opposite – entrust ourselves to Him and experience what He can achieve with our lives.