SỐNG VÀ CHIA SẺ LC- FR BRIAN 26TH SUNDAY-A
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- Category: 3. Sống & Chia Sẻ Lời Chúa
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Mo NguyenFri, Sep 25 at 12:50 AMTWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR A
27 SEPTEMBER 2020
SAYING 'YES' TO GOD
SAYING 'YES' TO GOD: 26th SUNDAY A (Matthew 21: 28-32)
It’s one thing to talk the talk, but another to walk the walk. We’ve been listening to the story Jesus told us about a father who said to his two sons: ‘Go and work in the vineyard today.’ The first answered: ‘No! I won’t.’ But later he changed his mind and went. That story reminds us that one of the wonderful things about being human is that we have free will. Having free will, we can change our minds and make a decision to say ‘yes’ to God, and begin new and better lives.
A man turned to drink. He began to live for his next drink. Drink became such an obsession and compulsion, that he also turned away from God and his family. One day while walking along and thinking of the mess he was making of his life, he saw a bent, rusty nail in the gutter. It reminded him of himself and his life. So, he picked it up and took it home. He put the nail on an anvil, and began to straighten it out and clean it up. An hour later, it looked like new again.
Then the thought hit him that he could straighten out and clean up his life as well. That thought triggered his conversion. He turned away from drink and back to God and his family. Today he keeps that nail, now straightened out, clean and bright, in his wallet. It reminds him to stay on the right path.
Both stories tell us that as long as we are alive, we can change, change for the better. Both stories tell us that actions speak louder than words, and louder than just good ideas and good intentions. Indeed, there is much truth in the proverb: ‘The way to hell [separation from God and goodness of life] is paved with good intentions.’ The second son in Jesus’ story knows the right words: ‘Certainly, sir,’ he says, but he does not keep his word. The first son, on the other hand, has second thoughts about his refusal. He demonstrates his repentance by there and then going to work in the vineyard.
That story Jesus told us is a powerful illustration of the truth he taught in his famous Sermon on the Mount: ‘It is not those who say to me, “Lord, Lord”, who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven’ (Mt 7:21).
Next, Jesus blitzes his opponents, the religious leaders, by turning his parable on them. You’ve been mouthing all the right words about God’s law, he tells them. You’ve been carrying out all the prescribed rituals. But you have not been doing what God wants. You have not been living in God’s way. And when John the Baptizer called on you to repent, you took no notice of him. On the other hand, tax collectors and prostitutes, who used to say ‘no’ to God, are now saying ‘yes’, and have meant what they said. They are now living in God’s way, as good, law-abiding and honest people, and now belong to God’s kingdom. But you, he tells his opponents, are not there yet, and you are not even close.
Jesus has a message for you and me as well. When it’s possible, we are church-goers. We say the prescribed words every time we come together to pray. We carry out the right rituals as laid down in the book. Then we go back to the world from which we came. Now there are many good and beautiful and wholesome things about our world. But there are also many corrupt and evil things. It’s a world where God has been pushed in the back, and shoved across the boundary line. No one blows the whistle about it, and no one seems to face the tribunal for what they do to God and the interests of God. All too often, in fact, rough play and dirty tricks get applauded and rewarded.
Our world has been saying to God: We don’t want you in our public schools. We don’t want to call on your name to tell the truth in our courts. We don’t want you calling us to financial responsibility. We don’t want any mention of you on any public occasion. And we have no intention of drawing back from polluting the planet you gave us.
After all, our world protests in its defence, not everyone believes in God. And with God out of its way, and out of its consciousness and conscience, our world has decided that just about anything goes. In movies and television there is so much profanity, violence, manipulation, seduction, casual and promiscuous sex. Pop music sometimes endorses drugs, rape, murder, suicide and witchcraft. Our world calls it entertainment. I call it a society that has lost its way, and is going to the hell and misery of its own superficiality, emptiness, meaninglessness, lovelessness and heartlessness.
Our world has well and truly lost its innocence. It is also putting you and me in serious danger of losing ours. And should we have already lost our innocence our world blocks us from straightening out our lives and cleaning up our act. But all is not lost. From having said ‘no’ to God, perhaps many times, we can start saying ‘yes’, and saying it not just many times, but saying it every time.
Our greatest hope for achieving this remains the person of Jesus, Saviour of the world and our personal Saviour. Every time we come together for the Eucharist, either face-to-face or by live streaming, he comes to us, and unites us to himself. At every Eucharist we remember what he has taught us. There he inspires us by his good example. There he takes each one of us firmly by the hand, and leads us to both goodness of life and the goodness of God.
In him we place our trust, then, not only to survive the presence of evil and corruption in an otherwise good and wholesome world, but even to flourish, to flourish as his followers. In him we find medicine for our weakness. In him we find food for our journeys. In him we find our way, our truth, and our life. May we keep saying over and over again, therefore, ‘Thank God for Jesus our Saviour! May we never part from him!’
Fr Brian Gleeson
Mary You Said Yes to God:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGT9VFBHpS8
XIN VÂNG / YES, LORD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUjKYsSWUQ8