Which Did The Father’s Will?, Twenty-Sixth Sunday (A), October 1, 2023

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: 

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 authority. So, with cowardly insincerity, they replied, “We do not know.” So Jesus told them that neither would he answer directly their question about the authority under which he was acting.
• Instead he gave them two parables: the one we have in today’s Gospel and the one we’ll have next Sunday, about the killing of the vineyard owner’s servants and son. The first was to highlight how, despite being God’s beloved children, the chief priests, elders, scribes and Pharisees, were just mouthing their obedience to him. They were saying “Yes,” to the work of cultivating their vineyard and the vineyard of others, but not going out to do the work. In contrast, Jesus highlighed, many of the “tax collectors and the prostitutes,” the two classes of public sinners whom Jesus’ interlocuters found most repulsive, even though they initially said “no” to God by refusing to live by the sixth, seventh and other commandments, were converting and “entering the kingdom of God” before them. John the Baptist, he underlined, had come “in the way of righteousness,” of holiness, and the publicans and prostitutes had repented, believed and followed; but the leaders of the people, despite their public profession of faith, refused. Even after they saw the fruits of conversion in the notorious sinners of their day, they didn’t “change [their] minds and believe.” They didn’t do the work of conversion. And they didn’t lift a finger to help others to convert. They refused to collaborate with the Father in the work of their vineyard or others. And as we know, they ended up showing where such hypocrisy can lead: mendaciously framing Jesus and having him tortured, crucified and killed.
• That’s why the Church has us ponder in today’s first reading God’s words through the Prophet Ezekiel. Many of you know that, in the Sunday Mass lectionary, the Old Testament reading is always chosen to prepare us for the teaching of the Gospel. Today we see the importance of the choice before us to cooperate with the grace of God in the work of conversion. The Lord tells us, “When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit inquity and dies, it is because of the iniquity that he must die.” If someone, in other words, once said “yes” to God and sought to obey, but then stopped following along the way of righteousness, he or she would die, not as a punishment from without, but as a choice from within. Ultimately hell is a place of definitive self-alienation from God. What unites people there is a free refusal to obey God, a deliberate choice to turn from a path of virtue toward evil, from the life-giving God to mortal sin and spiritual suicide. That’s a tragic possibility of human freedom. But the other is full of hope. God says but if a person “turns from the wickedness he has committed and does what is right and just, … he shall surely live, he shall not die.” If someone has long said “No,” to God, if someone has lived like the tax collectors, prostitutes and other forms of sinful life, and turns toward God and begins to walk along the way of righteousness, the person can indeed inherit eternal life. That’s what God wants.
• So just as Jesus made the parable of the two sons personal for the chief priests and the elders in the Gospel, so let’s allow him to make it personal for us. God the Father wants each of us to go out with him to work in the Vineyard of our soul and in others’ souls. No matter what type of life we’ve lived until now, he gives us that invitation, just as he did with Ezekiel, with John the Baptist, with his Son Jesus, and with popes and saints and missionaries throughout the centuries. He hopes we will say yes to the invitation and to follow through, to have in us the same mind that was in Christ, and to become obedient out of love to what God wants to do in us.
• The challenge for us to live today’s Gospel is not that we prefer to live like mafiosi and sex workers, but because we often prefer to live like the chief priests and the elders, to think we’re already religious enough and don’t really need a new life. Thus, when Jesus makes a strong call to conversion, we think he is really addressing other people, not us. I remember a homily Pope Benedict gave 12 years ago when he returned to his native Germany, where the Church is very rich and has a huge work force paid for by tax revenues, but in many places not only lacks a vibrant faith but is enfeebled by many wanting to think as the world thinks rather than with the mind of Christ. Pope Benedict emphasized that what Jesus was underlining in today’s Gospel was one of the “fundamental themes of [his] prophetic preaching.” He said, “The message of the parable is clear: it is not words that matter, but deeds, deeds of conversion and faith. Jesus directs this message to the chief priests and elders of the people, that is, to the experts of religion for the people of Israel. At first they say ‘yes’ to God’s will, but their piety becomes routine and God no longer matters to them. For this reason they find the message of John the Baptist and the message of Jesus disturbing.” The Pope then went on to “update” this image into more modern terms: “Translated into the language of our time, this statement might sound something like this: agnostics, who are constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart but suffer on account of our sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than believers whose life of faith is ‘routine’ and who regard the Church merely as an institution, without letting their hearts be touched by faith. The words of Jesus should make us all pause, in fact they should disturb us.”
• The point he was making was not just for his fellow Germans. Our practice of the faith, too, can sometimes go from a series of good habits to something routine. We can begin only to half-listen to the word of God. We can start to give far less than 100 percent to our prayer, spending more time and effort staring at our screens than we do adoring the Lord. We can cut corners on the moral life, not doing anything egregious, but allowing lots of dust from the world to accumulate in the lungs of our soul. We can lose our zeal to share our faith with others. We can become indifferent to people’s sufferings. We can distance ourselves from God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation or just go through the motions without contrition. At Mass, we can pray the Confiteor, shout “Thanks be to God” at the end of the readings, recite the Creed, state that we’ve lifted our hearts to the Lord, and say “Amen!” to when the priest says, “The Body of Christ.” Our words can remain the same, but we can start to go superficially on autopilot, without regularly recalibrating to ensure we have in ourselves the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, without cooperating with the Father in the work he seeks to do in the vineyard of our soul and others’. That’s what he was warning us all about.
• So what’s the remedy? Jesus was clear with us about the importance of deeds over words when he said during the Sermon on the Mount, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Mt 7:21). We can return to St. Paul’s words, to have in us the mind that was in Christ Jesus. In today’s parable, there really is a third Son whose example is set before us, someone who both says “yes” and then does what he is asked. It’s the Son who told us the parable: Jesus himself. As we read in the letter to the Hebrews, upon entering into the world, Jesus said to his Father, “Here I am, Lord, I have come to do your will” (Heb 10:7-9). Jesus never had to change his mind, as the first son did in the parable, because in his mind he was always seeking what the Father wanted. He was always saying, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” The more we think with the mind of Christ, and live according to that mentality with the help of God’s grace, the more we will please the Father and collaborate with him in the vineyard of the kingdom within and without. In response to Jesus’ question in the Gospel, “Which … did the will of his father?,” we’re called to respond that Jesus did the will of the Father! And today Jesus calls us to follow him in doing the Father’s will with him. He calls us to say “yes” to the Father and to act on that “yes.” To convert and follow through. To repent and believe. To think as God thinks, not as human beings do.
• One of the great teachers in how to have in us the mind of Christ Jesus is Our Lady. Every October, dedicated to her under the title of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, is an opportunity to enter into Mary’s school of saying “yes” and faithfully following through on that yes. Like the blessed Fruit of her womb, the Blessed Mother always sought to say “fiat” to God and to let her whole life develop in fidelity to God’s will. Throughout this month, we’re invited by the Church to ponder in the joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious moments of their lives both Jesus’ and Mary’s perpetual yeses to God. Praying the Rosary well helps us to echo Jesus’ and Mary’s fidelity in putting God’s word and will into practice. As St. John Paul II powerfully commented in his 2002 exhortation on the Rosary, “How could one possibly contemplate the mystery of the Child of Bethlehem, in the joyful mysteries, without experiencing the desire to welcome, defend and promote life, and to shoulder the burdens of suffering children all over the world? How could one possibly follow in the footsteps of Christ the Revealer, in the mysteries of light, without resolving to bear witness to his ‘Beatitudes’ in daily life? How could one contemplate Christ carrying the Cross and Christ Crucified, without feeling the need to act as a ‘Simon of Cyrene’ for our brothers and sisters weighed down by grief or crushed by despair? Finally, how could one possibly gaze upon the glory of the Risen Christ or of Mary Queen of Heaven, without yearning to make this world more beautiful, more just, more closely conformed to God’s plan? … Far from offering an escape from the problems of the world, the Rosary obliges us to see them with responsible and generous eyes, and obtains for us the strength to face them with the certainty of God’s help and the firm intention of bearing witness in every situation to love,” to the truth, and ultimately to God. In helping us to focus on Mary and Jesus, the Rosary strengthens us to imitate them in our faithful yes to God. It’s a school of the new and eternal covenant. This month I’d encourage you to pray the Rosary each day on your own, or together with us here in Church at 11 am Monday through Friday. It will help you to assume the mind of Christ and the faithful heart of Mary.
• There’s a particular intention we can be praying for throughout this month. From October 4-29, the Synod on Synodality will be taking place in the Vatican. It’s meant to be an opportunity for the whole Church to listen to and discern what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church and to journey together — that’s what syn-‘odos means in Greek — in acting on what God indicates. But there are some in the Church, like we’ve sadly seen in the German synodal way, who are looking toward the Synod as an opportunity to try to change what the Church believes God has revealed about the nature and structure of the Church, the Sacrament of Holy Orders, sexual morality, and human anthropology, not to mention important disciplines in the Church like priestly celibacy that ensure priests love God and you with their whole heart. We can’t be naïve that, while the Church is trying to respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the evil one is trying to get the Church to echo his own refusal to accept and follow the will of God. In response to that challenge, this month is a time for the whole Church to huddle around the Blessed Virgin Mary like the early Church did in the Upper Room and to pray that all Synod delegates as well as all of us who publicly say our “yes” to God each Sunday may follow through on that “yes,” having in us the mind that was in Christ Jesus, the obedient heart that was within Mary, and not the mind and heart that characterizes the spirit of the world.
• This type of fidelity is something we learn to do as we ponder the fifth Luminous mystery and put it into action at Mass. The Eucharist, which we are so mind-blowingly privileged to receive, helps us to conform our whole life to God’s will. Jesus had prayed in Gethsemane that the Father would take the chalice from him, but then added three times, “But not my will, but thine be done!” (Lk 22:42). That chalice was the cup of his suffering, filled with his own blood, which, becoming obedient even to death on the Cross, he ultimately gave us to drink. When Jesus told us during the Last Supper to “do this in memory of me,” he was not merely telling us to convene as we do today to celebrate this greatest event of all time, but to make our lives truly Eucharistic and, following his example, become obedient to the end of our own life, saying to God and to others, “This is my body, this is my blood, this is everything I am and have, this is my will, given for you.” May this third Son, this faithful Son whom we will receive in minutes, help us not merely to say, “Amen!,” but to follow through on the mission he out of love has entrusted to each of us and all of us. This way, not just with our lips but by our life, we will become, and help others to become, living commentaries of the words “Thy will be done!,” as we respond to the Father’s words, “Son, Daughter, go and work in the vineyard today.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Have in you the same attitude
that is also in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

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