This week’s gospel is the familiar rendition of attempts to entrap Jesus when He is asked, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” If Jesus says that the tax should be paid to Caesar, He would be considered guilty of false worship since the Romans believe the emperor to be divine. On the other hand, if Jesus says the tax should not be paid, He would be encouraging disobedience to Roman laws, which would be sedition – ...
Continue Reading →
Have you ever been invited somewhere that you really didn’t want to go?
My experience is that there are very few of us comfortable with just saying no to these invitations. We feel we have to offer a plausible explanation as to why we can’t attend. Come up with a believable excuse that will spare the inviter’s feelings.
This always brings back memories of asking girls out in high school. I am still not sure why Saturday night is such a big ...
Continue Reading →
Today’s gospel passage is one that used to really bother me. The king sees a wedding guest who is not wearing the proper clothing and has him bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness. I understood that the wedding garments had been provided for the guests and failure to wear the wedding garment was a sign of disrespect, but I was still uncomfortable with what I thought was an emphasis on wearing the “right” clothes. Today, I ...
Continue Reading →
This is the third Sunday we have a parable set in a vineyard. Vineyards are places where both labor and love take place. Biblically speaking, vineyards are where you earn your keep by working hard, and they are places of romance and courting. Labour and love. These three last Sundays have given us stories of labour but not so much love. You may recall the parable from a couple of weeks ago of the vineyard owner who hired labourers at ...
Continue Reading →
“When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?”
Today’s “Parable of the Landlord and the Tenant” describes a landlord who leases his healthy vineyard to tenants. The tenants abuse the vineyard and anyone whom the landlord sends to remind them of their responsibilities. It is easy to interpret the parable only as Jesus’ incrimination of the Pharisees or those who tried to extinguish his message. But as Sr. Mary McGlone of Celebration explains, “Parables aren’t puzzles to be understood, but calls to action crafted to ...
Continue Reading →
As you just heard, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of us. If this was a parable to be taken literally, I would be encouraging you all to work for Revenue Canada or to don fishnet stocking and hang out on street corners. The underlying message, nonetheless, is to be taken seriously. Jesus is addressing the chief priests and the elders, those who are supposed to be doing it all correctly, yet find themselves at the back of the line. ...
Continue Reading →
“……in humility regard others as better
than yourselves.”
(from today’s second reading)
It is hard to be humble when you are entitled. If one learns that the Creator has chosen one group over all others and has also learned from the best science of that time that one half of the Chosen are meant to rule over the other half, then to be humble is even more difficult. In the Bible these are familiar ideas. The prayer of the Pharisee thanking God for his gifts was sincere, ...
Continue Reading →
There are two things to keep in mind when we try to grapple with this parable (Mt. 20:1-16). Firstly, Matthew is writing for his faith community that is a mixture of Jewish Christians and Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians. The Jewish Christians know that their faith has come down to them through the centuries beginning with Abraham, Moses, and all the great prophets. It is a long-standing and rich relationship with God who selected them as the Chosen People. The Gentile Christians, by contrast, are seen as late-comers to the ...
Continue Reading →
I was in high school (a Roman Catholic all girls high school) and dating the captain of the boys’ Roman Catholic high school hockey team. There was an eagerly anticipated big game scheduled for the weekend. However, I was in the school choir, who were in the midst of the Kiwanis Music Festival, kind of a big deal in music circles in St. John’s, NL in the 1970’s. Our director, who knew a thing or two about teenage girls, and what was going on in the ...
Continue Reading →
In the first reading, the Book of Sirach poses a question to us, and I do not think it is just a rhetorical question. Does anyone harbour anger against another, and expect healing from the, Lord? The answer unfortunately, is: of course! I know lots of people, including myself, who want God’s healing mercy for themselves but who also want punishment for others. Our logic goes something like this: that person over there, by their sin, has crossed a line that I have not crossed. And ...
Continue Reading →