Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

October 1, 2023

Ezek 18:25-28, Ps 25, Phil 2:1-11, Mt 21:28-32

 

To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.1.23_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* The whole Christian faith is summarized by St. Paul in his words to the Christians in Philippi in today’s second reading: “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus.” He wants us, individually and collectively, to think like Jesus thinks, to be “of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing,” not being selfish or vain, but humble, looking out for others’ interests. In one of the earliest and most beautiful Christian hymns, which we hear every Palm Sunday, he describes how Jesus, even though he was God, poured himself out, humbled himself, and became obedient to the Father even to the point of death. That’s the attitude, the mindset, we’re called to have as disciples of Jesus, as Christians or “little Christs.”

* We might be intimidated at such a high calling, to have our mind, heart and action become like Jesus’, to humble ourselves and become the servants of others, to become obedient to the Father until death. But God does not leave us on our own, as if to become like Jesus is fundamentally our work, rather than his. But he wants us to cooperate with that plan of God to make us think as Jesus thinks, love as Jesus loves, and act as Jesus acts.

* That’s what today’s dramatic Gospel reading is all about. Just as the Father in Jesus’ parable says to his two sons, “Son, go out and work in the vineyard today,” so he says that to each of us every day. It could easily be called the Parable of Two Columbia Students. The Father is himself out hard at work. He wants us to join him in that labor. The vineyard is first our soul. He wants us to care for it so that it might bear great fruit. Then the vineyard is the world God created, most especially other peoples’ souls, which he wants us to help him cultivate so that they, too, may bear fruit. He engages our freedom. He urges us to do this work, but he, just like the two sons in the Parable, leaves us free to say “yes” or “no.”

* The importance of the choice is shown in the dramatic context of the parable. Jesus proclaimed it in the temple area of Jerusalem. He had already entered the gates of the city on Palm Sunday and had cleansed the temple area of the money changers and animal sellers who were exploiting and pilfering the poor who had come to sacrifice to God. He had cursed and dessicated a barren fig tree. That’s when the chief priests and elders of the people came to him to ask him by what authority he was doing what he was doing. Jesus knew that they had come in bad faith and so he told them in response that he would ask them one question, and if they answered his, he would answer theirs. “Where was John’s baptism from, … heavenly or human origin?,” he queried. It wasn’t a trick question. It wasn’t an academic one. John the Baptist’s work, we remember, was a work of conversion. If he were preaching and baptizing by heavenly origin, by divine mandate, then the chief priests and the elders, the scribes and the Pharisees, should have been converting just like the multitudes were. But those who were opposing Jesus, St. Matthew tells us, grasped that if they admitted that John came from God, then everyone would recognize that they’re hypocrites for not getting baptized and changing their lives. If they said John’s baptism was from human origin, they said among themselves, the people would turn on them, because the people knew that John wasn’t acting on his own a...