October 5, 2008
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings of the Day
First Reading: Is 5:1-7 / Psalm 80
Second Reading: Phil 4:6-9
Gospel: Mt 21:33-43 Parable of the tenants
The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.
Tenants who kill a landowner’s servants and even his beloved son deserve to be put “to a wretched death,” so suggested the listeners to Jesus’ parable.
I, too, am only a tenant in this world. As a steward of God’s gifts in his vineyard called earth, I, then, need to give to him what is due: among other things, time for the Eucharist on Sundays and a share of the fruits of my labor. In exchange for the gift of rain, for the warmth of the sun, for the steady soil under my feet, I need to return to him “his produce.”
If I do not do so, then, like the ungrateful tenants in the parable, I deserve a “wretched death.”
October 12, 2008
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings of the Day
First Reading: Is 25:6-10a / Psalm 23
Second Reading: Phil 4:12-14,19-20
Gospel: Mt 22:1-14 The Wedding Feast
Many are invited, but few are chosen.
A king exhausts all efforts to make his son’s wedding feast memorable even to the point of killing the invited guests and burning their city. Then in order to fill the hall with guests, he orders his servants to “invite to the feast whomever you find” in the main roads. In the end, however, he surprisingly throws out a man “not dressed in a wedding garment.”
The king may have been desperate for guests but, for him, certain traditions needed to be observed. The invitation to the kingdom of heaven, then, while open to all now – and no longer to an exclusive few – demands a certain reverence to age-old practices. Fidelity to these practices may mean being chosen; infidelity may mean being thrown out, as in the case of the man in the story. How do I value Church Tradition and traditions?
October 19, 2008
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings of the Day
First Reading: Is 45:1,4-6 / Psalm 96
Second Reading: 1 Thes 1:1-5b
Gospel: Mt 22:15-21 Paying taxes
Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.
Jesus amazes even the Pharisees who intended to entrap him in speech. Holding a Roman coin, he says to them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
Obligations, therefore, need to be observed, whether these are for the government or for the church. Taxes build more classroom, put more beds in hospitals, construct more farm-to-market roads, thereby, contributing to a country’s progress.
A good Christian, then, does not cheat especially in remitting taxes. Systemic corruption in society should not even be a reason why I should cut corners and cheat even just a little.
October 26, 2008
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings of the Day
First Reading: Ex 22:20-26 / Psalm 18
Second Reading: 1 Thes 15c-10
Gospel: Mt 22:34-40 The greatest commandment
You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.
The greatest commandment is to love the Lord with one’s own heart, soul and mind. The second is to love one’s neighbor as oneself.
In both commandments, there is a reaching out: a reaching out to the Divine which I do not see and touch but which I know exists; and, a reaching out to a fellow human being, flesh and blood like me.
I am important. Yet, my horizon needs to embrace both the Lord and my neighbor, both the divine and the human.
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