First Reading: Ez 18:25-28
Psalm: Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Second Reading: Phil 2:1-11
Gospel: Mt 21:28-32
Before Mass:
It’s great to be back from my pilgrimage – and I’ll be talking about it a little bit today – but I’ll give a presentation about it on Oct 31st if you want to hear more. Be careful – I could talk your ear off.
Three things to pay attention to today for the homily:
The first reading talks about God not being fair. At some point, all of us have probably thought that way.
Second- there’s a line that says “the Lord teaches the humble His way.” Listen actually in all the readings for ‘the way’ and ‘the path’. That’s probably the key to today’s homily.
Third – The Gospel talks about changing our minds. It’s more than just changing your mind like – oh – I’ll have chocolate instead of vanilla. The change of mind Jesus is referring to involves the core of how we believe and how we live.
How is God encouraging you to change YOUR mind?
Homily
Did you hear those three mini-themes in the readings? God is not fair, Jesus wants us to change our mind, and “the Lord teaches the humble His way.”
In spanish, the word for ‘the way’ is ‘camino’ – as many of you know, I just got back from the Camino de Santiago – the way of St James. It’s a 500 mile pilgrimage across Spain to the tomb of St James, and for those who are humble, the Lord can teach us as we walk the Way. What did He teach me?
I would pray daily for God to send me a Divine Appointment – someone He needed me to talk to – either to help them – or to teach me something. And most days I’d end up walking with someone and asking them questions – first the normal stuff like name, where are you from? where did you start walking? How far are you going? – then I’d ask questions aimed at drilling deeper – like – ‘why are you walking the camino’? ‘have you had any revelations in your silent time’?
That kind of deeper conversations created some instant friendships with people as they shared some deeper thoughts they might never have put into words before. Most of them I’ll never see again, but a few have become friends for life.
I learned that Not everybody in the world thinks like this boy from southern Indiana. In fact, it seems that many people out there have almost no spiritual upbringing. Faith is a foreign concept. Jesus is just someone who was misunderstood a long time ago and it would never occur to them to give their life to Jesus or God. It was surprising and a bit depressing that very few people were walking for spiritual reasons… we were some of the few. God knew I needed to have my mind changed and my eyes opened to the fact that the world needs God more than I ever knew.
Personally, there was one aha moment where I felt God changed my mind. We had a 19-mile hike one day up the mountain to O Cebrero, but we decided to take the scenic route, which wasn’t marked quite as well – so we lost the trail. At one point the path just ended and we weren’t sure whether to go back or what – fortunately, gps showed we were only a hundred yards from a road, so we went cross-country to the road and found our way back to the main camino. In doing so, it added a couple of miles to our already long day. The trail was rough in places and as we went it got steeper and steeper and the sun was getting hotter and hotter to the point we were having trouble putting one foot in front of the other. It would have been easy to think – “this isn’t fair God – It’s too hard”. But the joy I felt at the end of the day made me realize… the climb is what made the rest on the mountain top so sweet.
You see – a few days before, we had climbed the highest peak on the camino to the ‘cruz de ferro’ – ‘iron cross’ – which is supposed to be a great spiritual moment for pilgrims as we leave our burdens at the foot of the cross. But that day had been kind of a let-down… it was like a walk-in-the-park to that cross; not much of a challenge, so it didn’t feel very special at all! That LACK of challenge made it less meaningful… but THIS climb to O Cebrero meant MORE to me BECAUSE it was a struggle – and the extra miles we walked ADDED to the struggle – which made arriving at our destination so much more meaningful.
The lesson I learned is that God USES struggles to bring more joy to our lives. It doesn’t seem like it at the time, maybe – we may think God is not being fair – but once we realize that the challenge is necessary to make the reward sweeter, then we realize that a lost trail or a rock to trip on or a steep hill are actually blessings.
Think about those two guys in the Gospel… both were challenged to work in the vineyard. The first one DIDN’T do what he was supposed to do… He thought that the joy in life could be found doing something OTHER than what the Father told him to do. But the second son changed his mind and found that DOING the will of the Father is what made his life sweeter.
God wants us to change our mind… not because He’s a selfish tyrant who wants us to do whatever He says – He’s not being unfair. He knows we humans need to work for our own sake – as cruel as it sounds…WE NEED THE STRUGGLE.
At the same time, I know some people – many of you, in fact, who seem to struggle more than others. From my perspective, I look at that kind of suffering and think ‘God, your way isn’t fair!’ Why don’t you relieve this suffering? I believe you CAN do it, so why DON’T you?
In the end, I have to trust that somehow – even though it doesn’t seem fair to me – or you – God is allowing the struggle for some reason. When we’re not sure we can put one foot in front of the other, the only thing we can do it to keep following the Path – keep looking for the Way. When we don’t know what else to do, we trust that the best path is to keep doing what the Father told us to do.
That doesn’t take away the pain ‘now’, but Just knowing that we’re doing God’s Will gives us joy in this life as we anticipate the sweetness of the mountain top ahead.
