Sunday,
September 28, 2014
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
San Lorenzo Ruiz
1st Reading:
Ezekiel 18:25-28
2nd Reading:
Philippians 2:1-11
Gospel: Matthew 21:28-32
Jesus went on to say to the chief priests and the elders of the people, “What do you think of this? A man had two sons. He went to the first and said to him: ‘Son, today go and work in my vineyard.’ And the son answered: ‘I don’t want to.’ But later he thought better of it and went. Then the father went to the second and gave him the same command. This son replied: ‘I will go, sir,’ but he did not go.
“Which of the two did what the father wanted?” They answered, “The first.” And Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you: the publicans and the prostitutes are ahead of you on the way to the kingdom of heaven. For John came to show you the way of goodness but you did not believe him, yet the publicans and the prostitutes did. You were witnesses of this, but you neither repented nor believed him.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Today’s Liturgy of the Word deepens the meaning of the parable of the hired workers (Mt. 20:1-16) where a master paid all laborers equal salaries regardless of the number of hours of service rendered. God’s mercy is dynamic, and is not tied to one’s past performance. This finds support in today’s first reading from Ezekiel 18:25-28. It says that if a righteous man shifts to a sinful life and dies, he is doomed, whereas an evil person, who turns away from his sinful life and dies, will live forever. It sounds unfair but that is how God operates.
The past is not prejudicial to a repentant person. In the parable of the two brothers the disobedient one who later shaped up won the Gospel’s commendation. God evaluates men not the way men evaluate their own kind. The past cannot tie the generous and merciful hands of God.
People can make this wrong conclusion: If God looks at the ending, conversion can be postponed till after one has enjoyed the perquisites of the devil’s world. Wrong. Postponing conversion is a dangerous strategy. We are not computers that can be reformatted anytime in order to delete past inputs. Our past will always have remanent effects on the present. Like eyes accustomed to darkness which must be slowly introduced to the light, a bad person cannot just barge into the halls of morality without traumatizing his system. The trauma can break him down and defeat the very purpose of the transition from evil to good.
If we must move from evil to good the time to make the transition is now. God can wait but time cannot. When the waiting is over, will he find faith? (Luke 18:8).—Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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