Welcome to my blog. Peace be with you.
Today is Sunday. For all those who believe in Jesus, it is a day of
great rejoicing, a day of rest from the
week’s labours, a day when we can hear God speaking to us and we can speak to
him. It is a festival day for body and soul.
Sunday 27
September 2020
It’s never too late to come home
GOD'S WORD
First reading
Ezekiel 18:25-28 ·
When the
sinner renounces sin, he shall certainly live
The word of the Lord was addressed to me as
follows: ‘You object, “What the Lord does is unjust.” Listen, you House of
Israel: is what I do unjust? Is it not what you do that is unjust? When the
upright man renounces his integrity to commit sin and dies because of this, he
dies because of the evil that he himself has committed. When the sinner
renounces sin to become law-abiding and honest, he deserves to live. He has
chosen to renounce all his previous sins; he shall certainly live; he shall not
die.’
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 24(25):4-9
Remember your mercy, Lord.
Lord, make me know your ways.
Lord, teach me your paths.
Make me walk in your truth, and teach me:
for you are God my saviour.
Remember your mercy, Lord.
Remember your mercy, Lord,
and the love you have shown from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth.
In your love remember me,
because of your goodness, O Lord.
Remember your mercy, Lord.
The Lord is good and upright.
He shows the path to those who stray,
He guides the humble in the right path,
He teaches his way to the poor.
Remember your mercy, Lord.
Second reading
Philippians 2:1-11 ·
Be united in
your love
If our life in Christ means anything to you, if
love can persuade at all, or the Spirit that we have in common, or any
tenderness and sympathy, then be united in your convictions and united in your
love, with a common purpose and a common mind. That is the one thing which
would make me completely happy. There must be no competition among you, no
conceit; but everybody is to be self-effacing. Always consider the other person
to be better than yourself, so that nobody thinks of his own interests first
but everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead. In your minds you
must be the same as Christ Jesus:
His state was divine,
yet he did not cling
to his equality with God
but emptied himself
to assume the condition of a slave,
and became as men are;
and being as all men are,
he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death,
death on a cross.
But God raised him high
and gave him the name
which is above all other names
so that all beings in the heavens,
on earth and in the underworld,
should bend the knee at the name of Jesus
and that every tongue should acclaim
Jesus Christ as Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Gospel
Matthew 21:28-32
Tax
collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you
Jesus said to the chief priests and 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.’
A homily
Imagine a young couple, deeply in love with one another. They
marry and live together in great joy and happiness. There are no clouds of
darkness in the sky, nothing yet to trouble their hearts. They have been married
now for a year or so. So far, they have lacked nothing, let us imagine. But then
a longing emerges in the hearts. ‘We need a child to be the image of our love
and to share our love.’ Let us imagine, the wife conceives and has a son. They are
overjoyed. Time goes on and another yearning begins to grow. ‘Wouldn’t it be so
good if we had a baby girl to love and care for.’
And so, it is with God, not of course that God needs anything.
God, the three Persons of the Trinity, lacked nothing. They lived in infinite happiness.
But they wanted to share their happiness. So, they decided to create a world. As
nothing existed except God in three distinct Persons, they created from
nothing. The universe and the earth came into being. There was, however, no
life in it. So, God took some soil from a field and made it into the image of a
human being. It was beautiful, but it had no life in it. So, God breathed the
breath of life into it and it became a living being. From this living being he
made another. They were now a man and a woman. The three divine persons made
them like themselves, little human gods, you might say.
If these little creatures were wise, then they would
recognise the God who made them. They would thank him and love him. The three
Person who are God would be overjoyed with them and bless them at every moment.
They were their beloved children.
Let us imagine, however, that these children of God developed
some strange idea that they didn’t need the God who created them. Not only that
they didn’t need him, but they didn’t want him. He was an obstacle, they
thought, to their enjoying life. And so, they left their Creator God and began to do their
own thing. Now their Creator God loved them still, and would not destroy them as
a mistake and start again with a new creation. But what would now happen to
those creatures who in themselves were only a lump of mud, given life by God. Naturally
when their life in this world was over, they would become mud again.
This is what happens to every sinner, God says in the first
reading. It is a tragic ending to what could have been a beautiful family life
with God. It’s like as if the boy conceived in great love by his parents, becomes
a rebellious child as he grows up. Even as a child, he will not listen to his
parents and when be becomes eighteen, he leaves home to make his own way in the
world. He goes to the capital city but falls in with bad company. He begins to
drink and take drugs and his life sinks into chaos. He cannot work with his
hands and he has no employable skill. He ends up a beggar on the street, till
through his addiction to drink and drugs, he dies in misery. Such is the fate,
the Word of God tells us today, of those who abandon the loving God who created
them for a wondrous future. They will ultimately sink eternal misery, of their
own choosing.
But there is hope! The drug addict who returns home will
still be addicted. But if the sinner returns to God, then God will recreate him
and make him even better than before. He is still the loving all powerful God
who created him in the first place. This is the future for the sinner who
returns to God.
There is even more for those who have the wisdom to abandon
sin and return to the God who loves them. The second Person, of the one true
God, emptied himself of all his divine power and glory and became a human being
and lives among us. He didn’t just become a human being but a human slave. Risen
from the dead, he is with us and invites everyone and particularly those who
lost everything by their ignorant sinfulness to become his friend. He will help
them as one human being to another. But since he is in fact God, he can help in
a way no one else can. He can be our companion in life and cure us from the
results of our folly. If we become his friend, we will share in his glory. His name
is Jesus. He was humiliated on a cross, but God raised him to glory as the
forerunner of all those who return from the degradation of sin.
Today’s readings tell us that it is never too late to return
to the splendour of God from the slum of sin. All we must do is accept with all
our hearts the offer of friendship made by Jesus, God in human flesh.
Each of us must make our response. What is yours?
