This Sunday’s Gospel burns the lips of all those “who often say and do not do,” perhaps believers but not yet entirely credible. God’s word sheds a challenging examination that involves everyone, for no one can say they are exempt from the inconsistency between saying and doing. Is the Gospel a severely demanding, unattainable project?…
Someone has a question for Jesus: Teacher, what is the greatest commandment? The core directive, the law that simplifies life and goes straight to the essentials? Jesus doesn’t hesitate and loudly lets his inner inspiration sum it up in a phrase: “You shall love” — a verb in the future tense, indicating a never-ending action…
God is great! Amen!? (Amen). Our psalm today says, “Awesome is he, beyond all gods. For all the gods of the nations are things of nought, but the LORD made the heavens.” Finally, it says, “Give to the LORD glory and praise; give to the LORD the glory DUE his name!” Read all
This Sunday’s gospel portrays a group coming to Jesus and asking him a cunning question, wishing to trigger hatred and enemies: is it lawful or not to pay taxes to Rome? They are partisans of Herod, the Idumean puppet king put in place by Rome; together are the Pharisees, who dream of a theocracy under…
The Gospel reiterates that the backbone of faith is the gift, and at the source, “THE” original gift: “If you knew the gift of God!” Today’s parable tells it well: there is a feast in town, the most important of feasts, the king’s son is getting married. Religion breathes the air of festivity; its source…
Jesus loved vineyards: he firmly said: I am the vine, and you are the branches (John 15:5). But the weekend Gospel presents a blood harvest, with evil characters plotting Jesus’ death: “This is the heir; come, let us kill him.” God’s love does not give up through the parable, and three times, after each disappointment,…
Today’s readings come from times of turmoil. We start the first reading with the words, “The Lord’s way in not fair!” Paul writes the second reading from his prison cell, facing the possibility of death, not unlike the death of Jesus. Paul talks to the Church of Philippi with some of the strongest words in…
The first son in the gospel repented and went to work. Wait! What did he repent of? Of saying no to his Father? Matthew says he “converted and transformed” his way of seeing things. His worldview had shifted in a revealing path toward the Father, the vineyard, and his obedience. It is no longer his…
This Sunday’s parable places us in the old town square. We see a group of laborers waiting all day for work, but we need someone to hire them. The vineyard owner tirelessly scouted for workers since dawn, relentlessly between the field and the square until nightfall. The owner is a consoling image in our spiritual…
Jesus said: If someone wants to come after me… That’s a liberating conditional: “If someone wants to.” If you want to, you might go or not; you choose, no imposition; with Jesus, “master of free men,” “source of free lives,” is only if you want. First: self-denial. A dangerous verb if misunderstood. To deny yourself…