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…
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…
After two and a half years spent with Jesus, walking along paths and villages, Jesus opens an opinion poll with his disciples: What do people say about me? The people’s opinion is exemplary about the Rabbi: You have the voice that opens my heart; you sound like many great prophets, a lover of God. Jesus…
The woman of the scraps, the pagan Canaanite woman, surprises and challenges Jesus: she turns him from the master of Israel to the shepherd of all those in sorrow worldwide. An indomitable woman does not give up; like any true mother, she thinks of her child and gets closer to Jesus. She throws herself to…
Jesus used two similar parables to vividly depict faith’s beauty, similar to when the sun rises silently to create a golden background. He evokes treasures and pearls, beautiful and unusual terms in our relationship with God. It is the language of novels and pirates; in those adventures, we usually don’t find priests or liturgies, first…
Good and evil, good seed and bad weeds have taken root in my turf: My heart seems to be a battleground for the opposing forces of life and death. And from that reality, the Lord Jesus develops one of his most beautiful parables to guide me on my inner journey in God’s style. My first…
Out of the living voice of Jesus, we hear parables. Listening to them is like listening to the murmur of the spring, the initial, fresh, springing moment of the Gospel. The parables are not an afterthought or an exception but the highest, most brilliant, refined tip of Jesus’ language. He loved the lake, the wheat…