Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel According to Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people, what is your opinion?
A man had two sons.
He came to the first and said, son, go out and work in the vineyard today.
He said in reply, I will not.
But afterwards changed his mind and went.
The man came to the other son and gave him the same order.
He said in reply, yes sir, but did not go.
Which of the two did his Father's will?
They answered the first.
Jesus said to them, amen. I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.
When John came to you in the way of all righteousness, you did not believe him, but tax collectors and prostitutes did.
Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe in him.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.
This gospel sets up a very clear dichotomy between those who thought they were living out their Judaism correctly but in reality were self righteous versus those who are always seen as sinners and on the outsider as an outsider.
And Jesus holds them up as oftentimes being a better example of a follower of God than the religious people.
So I want to do a modern day spin on that.
I want to ask you a question.
Now I'm not looking for you to shout out an answer, but I want you to answer it for yourselves in your hearts.
What is your opinion?
A man had two sons.
One of them was in church every week.
He prayed the liturgy, the hours and his rosary every day.
He gave 10% of his income to the church and he treated everybody he worked with, everybody he encountered with contempt or dismissed them.
He did nothing for his neighbor and he never showed love to anybody outside of his family.
The second son rarely if ever came to church and when he did, he felt like he was being stared at because it tended to be around the major feast days, Christmas or Easter.
Yet he devoted a large percentage of his life to caring for other people.
He was gracious, he was merciful.
He offered his time, talent and treasure to his neighbors and even to strangers.
In your opinion, which one is the better disciple of Jesus?
Now you probably already know where I'm going with this, but my answer, shockingly enough for what I do as a vocation is Very much the second one, the one that lives it out day by day.
Now, in a perfect world, by the way, both of those things are integrated together.
And I would even argue that what we do here, listening to God's word proclaimed, sharing in Christ's presence as the whole body of Christ, and breaking bread and sharing the cup, the real presence of Christ made one with us. That helps us to do those other things, to be good disciples.
But more often than not, I have had parents in despair because their kids don't go to church.
So I always ask them those questions. Are they good people? Do they love one another? Do they share things with one another?
Are they good stewards of the gifts they've been given?
And if the answer is yes, I say, don't worry too much about that.
Let God continue to work in their lives. My guess is you will eventually see them back, because people like that eventually are drawn back to being together with other people that believe and share and give.
But if we've gotten to a point where the way we live out our faith in external and in practice, if we've gotten to that point where we think we're doing everything right, like the scribes and Pharisees in the beginning of the Gospel, those are the hardest hearts to actually penetrate.
Because if I'm doing everything right, I don't need to listen to you, I don't need to change, I don't need to be converted. I've already got it figured out.
And the reality of that is, if we're honest, I don't even need God because I'm already perfect.
I know all of you, including myself most of all, realize we are so far from perfection.
But as long as we try, as long as we trust, as long as we give of ourselves to one another, God's happy.
