Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

The readings for Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time may be found at:  

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101523.cfm

This week, the evangelist St. Matthew writes of Jesus telling another parable.

Where Jesus gives us a beautiful image

of heaven as a wedding feast and celebration given by a great king in his great hall. 

Today we call it a reception, but I love the term wedding feast. 

It just sounds so much more joyful and happy.

Now in this parable of the wedding feast,

God is that great King, extending invitations for people to come, 

to celebrate with his son, Jesus 

and his bride, the Church.

God being love itself, and God loving and wanting to save everyone. 

So, God invites us to celebrate Jesus as the marriage of divinity and humanity, true God and true man and his One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.  

God invites us to join in the joy of this union with hope of everlasting salvation in heaven.

And how important it is that we respond to that invitation.

The good news is that all are invited.

However, not all accept it. 

If we don’t respond to a wedding invitation from a friend, 

there may be some bad feelings, 

it could make things awkward for a little while, 

but the relationship can likely recover from it.

If we don’t respond to the invitation from God,

the impact is far greater and everlasting.

In the parable, when the King’s invitation is rejected and his servants delivering the invitations are mistreated and killed, 

He sends his troops to destroy those responsible and burn their city.

Those people rejected the King’s invitation, facing judgment and punishment as a result.

So will those who reject God’s invitation.

The King then casts a wider net and invites many more people, both good and bad, to attend the wedding feast.  

We are those people.  We have been invited to the wedding feast.

To the church, to share in the hope of everlasting life in heaven.

We are here.  We accepted the invitation and that’s good.

But in this parable, Jesus tells us that just accepting the invitation is not enough.

Accepting the invitation doesn’t mean we get to stay.

Jesus tells us of the King seeing a man without the proper wedding garment which symbolizes our right to come into his great, kingly hall and to fit in. 

Now this is not a fashion show.  

This wedding garment is not the clothes we wear on the outside, 

But rather what we wear on the inside.

And God can see it.

This is a wedding garment of charity and sanctifying grace.

Do we do more than just come to Mass?

Do we believe in Jesus and what he is telling us?

Do we reflect that belief in our actions and the way we live our lives?

When we fall short, do we go to confession,

 

knowing that we further compound our sins if we go to communion without having done a good examination of conscience and received absolution from a priest in the sacrament of confession?

If we haven’t been to confession recently, we don’t have the right wedding garment and we should probably do that.  

Soon.

It’s uncomfortable to think about, but without it, 

Jesus tells us we will be bound and thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Where we will forever be separated from God.

That’s not easy to hear, but we need to hear it.  (Pause)

The King has invited us to the wedding feast.

It is so important that we have accepted his invitation and have the right wedding garment.

How we wear it will have a lot to say about whether we have what it takes to stay at the feast forever or

Whether we too will be bound and thrown out into the darkness.  (Pause)

This week, as we reflect on this parable,

Let us remember that God’s invitation to the heavenly banquet is a great gift and cause for joy.

Let us pray that we respond with generosity to this gracious invitation 

And ask for the strength to always be clothed in a wedding garment of charity and sanctifying grace, 

Reminded always that many are invited but few are chosen and that

None of us will be taken into the eternal wedding feast against our will. 

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

The readings for Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time may be found at:  

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091023.cfm

In this week’s gospel from St. Matthew, Jesus reminds us to deal with conflicts head on.

And like always, He packs a lot into just a few words.

Jesus tells us that we have the right and responsibility to confront those who wrong us.

Now, raise your hand if someone has wronged you sometime.  

Keep it raised if the person who wronged you is me!  

Whew - I was worried for a moment.

So all of us have felt wronged.

And when that happens, what do we do?  

I’m sure we’ve all experienced the wrong way to deal with it.

What Jesus tells us to do today is different from how those without faith would handle it.

When we act without faith, we often pick the way that is the most harmful to everyone involved.  

Including us.

Instead of approaching the situation in the humble, loving, self-reflective way needed to resolve the conflict,

We can prefer to be right and end up making things worse.

Sometimes we gossip about the conflict.  

We talk to people who can do nothing to help resolve the situation 

and at the same time, 

assassinate the character of the person involved. 

Poisoning us and everyone we involve in the process.

Definitely, not what Jesus is telling us to do.

The other thing we do, when we act without faith, is avoid conflict altogether.  

We avoid the person, the topic, pretend it didn’t happen or say that it doesn’t matter. 

And we often avoid conflict because it can make us feel anxious or uncomfortable.

In trying to avoid being uncomfortable, we almost always accomplish the exact opposite thing - bringing us more stress and anxiety.

As we become even more resentful and bitter.

Definitely, not what Jesus wants for us.

So He proposes a different path.

He asks us to confront the person who has wronged us, 

but to do it in a spirit of humility and love.

The approach Jesus recommends in today’s gospel is simple and good and just.

He challenges us to face life head-on, not to gloss over the truth, not to avoid challenges, 

but to do it from a place of love and humility, not righteousness.

But it doesn’t end there.

Once we’ve tried to resolve the conflict one-on-one, if that doesn’t work, 

He says we should include others to help mediate.  

To be clear, Jesus is not telling us to gang up on each other, 

but rather that sometimes we might need a little help to clear things up.

Finally, Jesus talks about bringing the conflict to the Church.  

This doesn’t mean that Father or I will be mediating your personal disputes, necessarily.

This speaks to the power of prayer.

Prayer really works - prayer changes things.

Whether we pray for ourselves, the other person or whatever.

Prayer fosters - grace, humility and strength to approach conflicts from a place of love.  

Prayer makes a real difference.

And it makes even more of a difference when we pray together.  

When we pray together, like we do at Holy Mass or each Wednesday evening at 6pm here in this Church, literally in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament,

Jesus says it quite clearly - 

Our Heavenly Father will answer those prayers, 

because Jesus is there “in the midst of us” praying with us, 

and the Father always grants the prayers of his Son. 

There’s no catch to it. 

Jesus means exactly what he says. 

He is not a liar.  He keeps his promises. 

For our part we need to believe and pray and wait in faith. 

Now if all of that fails, 

talking to that person in a spirit of love and reconciliation, 

working through others to try to achieve the same, 

praying alone, together, in Church,

Jesus tells us to treat that person like a Gentile or Tax Collector.

He’s given us the all clear to walk away.

Jesus doesn’t ask us to be a victim.  

So this week, 

Let us be mindful of what Jesus tells us,

that we always be open to correction and reconciliation in our relationships with one another,

that we try to build bridges of love and understanding rather than walls of division and hatred,

That we do this all in conjunction with prayer for his intercession

And when all else fails 

That we have the wherewithal to walk away.

Amen.

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

The readings for Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time may be found at:  

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072323.cfm

In today’s gospel from Saint Matthew, we hear another parable.  

And just like last Sunday, Jesus uses the planting of seeds to make His point.

He tells us of a field of wheat being sabotaged by an enemy who secretly planted weeds in it.  

And when these weeds grow, they look just like wheat.

Our human eyes can’t tell them apart.

By the time wheat and weeds grow to where we can tell the difference - 

they are so tangled, that if we pull out the weeds, we also lose the wheat.

Jesus is the sower that always plants good seed - the wheat.

The devil and our own sinfulness plant the weeds. 

The wheat and weeds grow together - until God separates them at the harvest. 

Now, It’s complicated to live in a world of wheat and weeds, isn’t it?

We want to be able to easily separate them.

To put them into neat little boxes.

And we do that all the time.

We classify people as “good” or “bad”, as “wheat” or “weeds”. 

We judge their hearts.

We decide who is worthy of our time, our love, and of mercy. 

And in the process, we take the power that belongs only to God.

We forget we are not judges.  

That only God knows the human heart.

That only God knows what He is doing when it comes to sifting the wheat from the weeds. 

That only He knows our hearts, and only He can know the state of someone’s soul.

Now, I want to be clear.  

That doesn’t mean that everything we see people do is okay 

and that we should keep our mouths closed and just let God take care of it.

No.

Sacred Scripture tells us that we are His hands and feet.

It’s not wrong for us to state that certain actions are sinful. 

Jesus commands us not to judge, 

but he does command us to rebuke and correct someone who sins against us.

He doesn’t ask us to be a victim.

Now, there’s a difference between judging a behavior and judging the state of someone’s soul. 

Only God can judge someone.

Only He knows their backgrounds, wounds, thoughts, and motives.

But we can and must rebuke and correct.

And when we do so, we need to do it from a place of love and care for the other person - 

the way Jesus would - 

the way Jesus commands us to do.

We live in a world of tangled weeds and wheat. 

Sin and holiness - side by side, even in this Church. 

Sinners, including me, in these pews and at this altar. 

While the devil works tirelessly planting more weeds.

If we allow the weeds to lead us away, we’re giving the devil exactly what he wants.

We need to have patience with each other and ourselves. 

We all need to lead from a place of love first.  The way Jesus does.

We all want to pull up the weeds. 

But Jesus tells us that if we do that - we risk tossing out the wheat.

We risk tossing out even ourselves! 

Ultimately, this parable should be reassuring to us. 

Because each of us has a soul.

And our souls, themselves are wheat and weeds together.  

We all need God’s grace. 

This should remind us to be humble in how we approach others.

And it’s why Jesus gave us the Sacrament of Reconciliation - Confession.

We must bring our wheat and weeds to Jesus in confession.

He clearly sees which is which.

Through a priest, He gives us absolution and removes the weeds.

We don’t have the ability to do that for ourselves or anyone else.  

If we try to - we do more damage than good to the crop.

He will handle the weeds.  

He’s got this.

We must take advantage of confession, especially if we have not been in a while.

We must pray for our family and friends, that they will let the sower do His work.  

That they do not ignore the call to conversion.

We must pray for our enemies, who we often see as weeds and not wheat.

We must never give up praying for their conversion. 

And we must never give up praying for our own!

We are all wheat and weeds together.

Thanks to the mercy and patience of God, 

Let us pray that His harvest will be abundant and full of wheat.

That we may all be gathered safely in His barn, 

And that we do not end up tied into neat bundles for burning.  

Amen.