29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 As I have pointed out previously, the exchanges we have heard about can be considered as taking the form of a trial. Jesus, the Messiah visiting his Temple, hands down judgment on it by cleansing the Court of the Gentiles. The chief priests and elders call him to account by asking: "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" (Mtt 21: 23) Jesus replies by referring them to John the Baptist and giving them a series of parables that convict them of unbelief, failing to render to God the fruit of the Kingdom and refusing to accept God's invitation to his wedding banquet. Disgruntled by Jesus' defiance the Pharisees counter-attack by asking: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?" (Mtt 22: 17) Either way, they think, Jesus will be discredited in the eyes of his followers or by the Roman authority. Jesus' reply instead traps them. It is they who are holding coins with the image of the pagan emperor. It is they who prioritize money and political power ahead of God. It is they who have sold out their faith for secular gain.  Thus, they are amazed as they have been outwitted by Jesus, thought to be son of the carpenter, from Nazareth. Publicly humiliated in the presence of Jesus' disciples and their own supporters, no wonder  their minds turn to murder since they are unable to defeat Jesus in debate. Let us pray that we ourselves will not be counted among such hypocrites when our risen Lord returns in glory.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 The parable for this week strikes me as having the same message as that from last week except the metaphor is that of a wedding feast rather than a vineyard. Last week the warning was that: "...the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom." (Mtt 21: 43) Today we hear: "For many are called, but few are chosen." (Mtt 22: 14) The warnings against complacency, presumption and entitlement are severe. Matthew's community as well as the Church in New Zealand in 2023, I think, faced the challenge of living out being Church in a hostile environment. The temptation is to turn inward and erect defenses against a world that does not understand us. Rather, we called to go outward and to share with others the joy of the Gospel regardless of who they are. The Holy Spirit will guide and empower us in this mission which originates from the Risen Lord.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Today the "trial" by the elders and chief priests of Jesus for his cleansing of the Temple continues. What they wanted to know was: "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" (Mtt 21: 23) Yet, it seems, that the chief priests and the elders are the ones being held to account. Interestingly, it is only in Matthew  that they speak a verdict on themselves when they say: "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time." (Mtt 21: 41) Jesus makes it plain to them that this applies to the chief priests and the elders themselves. They are hoist by their own petard. The consequence of this is that the Kingdom is henceforth given over to those who will produce the fruits in due season. Saint Matthew would say that it is the Christian community which is the new tenants and it is charged with producing the fruit. Once the chief priests and Pharisees realize that the parable is directed at them they want to arrest Jesus. Are we as Church, in 2023, producing the fruit of the Kingdom? Or, do we share the attitudes and practices of entitlement and self-interest that Jesus condemns?

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 To understand today's gospel we need to be aware of the context. Jesus has just entered Jerusalem in triumph, cleansed the Temple and cursed the fig tree. All of these actions speak of Jesus fulfilling his messianic mission. The triumphal entry fulfils Scripture and foretells the resurrection while the cleansing of the Temple is a visitation of the Messiah to his Temple, where he proclaims judgement upon it. His messianic ministry is further manifested as: "The blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he cured them." (Mtt 21: 14) The chief priests and the scribes see all of this and its implications. They ask angrily: "Do you hear what they are saying?" (Mtt 21: 16) Thus, the chief priests and the elders are pushed to challenge Jesus' pretension to messianic authority. Jesus does not apologize or back down. Instead, he refers to John the Baptizer as his precursor, fulfilling the role of Elijah, and gives us the parable of the two sons that we hear today. Jesus condemns the Jewish authorities for saying "yes" to God but then doing nothing. If they had been converted by John the Baptist then they would accept Jesus as the Messiah, just as the people have. The people they regard with contempt, the tax collectors and prostitutes, have listened to John the Baptist and been converted. Their "no" to God has become a "yes." The challenge for us is to question the quality of our own response to the grace given in the Gospel and the sacraments. Each of us needs to be alert such that my initial "yes" to Christ is truly an ongoing "yes." If I have contempt for others and am judgmental towards them perhaps I may be falling into the attitude of the chief priests and elders. 

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Living out our Catholic faith as a community has never been easy.  In recent weeks we have read on Sundays about dispute resolution and the individual exercise of mercy in the Matthean community. We know from elsewhere in the New Testament that the followers of "The Way" faced challenges in their nascent Church of: fraud (Acts 5: 1-11), ethnic prejudice (Acts 6: 1) and racial intolerance/doctrinal disagreement (Acts 11: 3). In addition, the Early Church was mindful of those who had: been with the community: "... beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us." (Acts 1: 22) Jesus, himself, had given priority in his earthly ministry to the Jewish people (Mtt 15: 24) which is also reflected in the fact that St Paul would, when he arrived in a city to spread the Good News, would go first to the local synagogue. (eg. Acts 17: 2) It is understandable, therefore, that individually and collectively Jewish believers would look at later Greek speaking Jewish or Gentile believers with the same attitude as we hear from the early workers in the parable today: "These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat." (Mtt 20:12) There is a challenge, in all this, to the contemporary Church to focus not on human ideas of precedence rather to express the mercy and generosity of God to all those who are drawn to experience him through the Church and the sacraments. Just as God's mercy is our mercy, so too his generosity is our generosity. There is no room for jealousy in the Church: " 'For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ." (1 Cor 2: 16) 

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Last Sunday we heard about conflict resolution in the Christian community. Today we receive a lesson on the personal obligation of forgiveness. The focus is not on the offender nor is it primarily on myself. Rather, the focus is on God's mercy towards me as the source of the duty to forgive those who have wronged me. St Paul points out: "If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." (Rm 14: 8) The king, in the parable, says to the servant: "You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?" (Mtt 18: 32-33) Every time we come to Mass we make the penitential act in which we invoke and celebrate God's mercy towards us. Every time we come to reconciliation we avail ourselves of God's forgiveness. Every time we receive the anointing of the sick we rely on God to heal us and forgive us our sins. We acknowledge God's mercy in the Lord's Prayer each time we say: "... forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." As a result, we should not be unmindful of the duty to forgive others when we are such rich beneficiaries of God's mercy. If that is not enough, there is further incentive from our First Reading: "Remember the end of your life... remember corruption and death... Remember the commandments... remember the covenant of the Most High" (Sir 28: 6-7) The last thing we want to happen to me is that: "And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt." (Mtt 18: 35)

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Only recently have I noticed that the gospel selections from the lectionary for Year A are presenting to us those parts of the Gospel of Matthew which do not appear in the other two synoptic gospels of Mark and Luke. It is important to remember that Matthew, most likely, had Mark in front of him when he wrote his gospel and furthermore he had no second volume in mind, such as Luke's Acts of the Apostles, in which to address the life of the Early Church. This, I suspect, explains the emphasis on the role of St Peter that we have seen in the previous two Sunday gospel episodes. It can also shine light on today's gospel which stresses the importance of dispute resolution in the Matthean community. There is an anachronism here as Jesus, before the Church was manifested at Pentecost, is shown as teaching: "If the brother of sister refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector." (Mtt 18: 17) Matthew is applying Jesus' teaching on mercy and forgiveness to the life of his own community by which he seeks to reduce conflict among its members as well as protecting the common good. What is even more interesting is that Jesus, even when absent, that is after the Ascension, is made present in the members of the Church when they gather in prayer: "Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among you." (Mtt 18: 19-20) This teaching has important implications for us as we gather this morning and pray together in the Mass, which is primarily the sacrificial prayer of our Risen Lord, present in the people, the Blessed Sacrament, the Word and the priest.