26th Sunday A
Mt.21:28-32
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 he changed his mind and went. The man came to the other son and gave 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” (Mt.21: 28-31).
The story is told of a man who was confined to his bed at home. People from the parish came to see him. After their visit, they said, "We will pray for you." The cripple replied, "I can do my own praying. But, if you really want to help, you can take out the garbage and do the dishes"(Gilhooley).
Sometimes it is so easy for us to express our care and concern but we fail to demonstrate it more eloquently through our action. As Christians we must be the visual aid to teach other people the right way of living. In the parable of the two sons, we heard the first saying “No” to his father who told him to go out and work in the vineyard, but later he changed his mind and went. The second son on the other hand, says, “Yes” but actually did not go. The first son may be worse for saying “No” but because he resolved to go, he was actually the better one. The second son may be commendable for saying, “Yes” to his father, but he is false to his father. His love is only in words and not with his heart and his action.
From this we can see that what validates and authenticates our love is our action. We prove our love by our deeds. Actions speak louder than words. Jesus is teaching us how to be committed to God. Commitment is a matter of performance and not words. It is not only observing rituals and keeping the rules but also living the Gospel values. Our greatest downfall as Christians is the ambivalent ways we live our lives. We praise God inside the church but we are indifferent with our fellow human beings outside the worship.
In 1896, Charles Sheldon had written a book “In His Steps”, which started the movement WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?). One day a ragged man told a church congregation, “It seems to me, there’s an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn’t exist if all the people who sing such songs live them out.” The man later passed away. The minister and congregation were shocked and ashamed. They pledge to do everything in their daily lives after asking the question, “What would Jesus do?”
Saying “yes” to God means we try to become Jesus to others. There must be congruence in what we say and do. Perhaps we are drawn to God’s love but our response is “no” because we are not yet ready to commit ourselves to Him. Thus, we fail many times. But the good news is we can always repent and commit ourselves to the truth. We can overcome our resistance and hesitation and love God with our action. The challenge of true Christian commitment is not only to say, “Yes” to God but also to be like Jesus to others. When people meet and get to know us, do they also want to meet and get to know Christ? Do we attract people to Christ or we turn them off by the way we live? Let us turn away from selfishness and hypocrisy. Let us humble ourselves to the Lord and ask pardon for the many times we say “no”.
Let us not only say nice things to others but act in the way that enhances their well-being.
Rev. Fr. Nony S. Villaluz, CRM
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Putting Ourselves Back in Control
24th Sunday A
Mt.18:21-35
Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times”(Mt. 18. 22-23).
Peter asked the Lord how many times does one have to forgive. Jesus told him, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.” Why did Jesus say this? When we are doing something good and beautiful, we want to repeat it endlessly. Forgiveness is something beautiful and it must be done endlessly.
What is Forgiveness? When we are wronged we carry pains in our hearts. Deep within us we feel the need to protect our pride and demand justice for the unfair actions done to us. If we are thinking that seeing our offenders punished for what they have done, would give us some peace of mind, we are mistaken. The key to inner peace is not revenge but forgiveness. Forgiveness is the only choice that we can make to have a peaceful heart. To forgive is to use our creative power to heal the wounds of the past that we cannot change. We want to be healed by forgiving those people whom we blame for wronging and wounding us. While forgiveness may be an unnatural response to the wrongs done to us, it is the only remedy to heal our pain.
One time, I was watching the news and it’s about the son of Lydia De Vega (Philippine sprint queen) who was killed when hit by a passenger jeep. She loved her son very much and mourned his death. However, she did not sue the driver. She said, “I already lost my son because of what happened. I don’t want the children of this driver to suffer the loss of their father if he will be incarcerated. One loss is enough.”
Isn’t this inspiring?
Why do we need to forgive? We need to forgive not only because it is an opportunity to be like Jesus to our wrongdoers. We need to forgive because this is what is good for us. We want to forgive not because we condone the wrongs done to us but we simply want to give peace to ourselves. The decision to forgive is an act of charity for others and for ourselves. Schell said, “To refuse to forgive is to continue to hurt yourself. Victimized once, your lack of forgiveness keeps you stuck as a victim, holding on to a victim’s identity.” We need to forgive because we don’t want to live a disturbed, agitated, and distressed life. Forgiveness is about the quality of our life. Whenever we ask the questions: “What if our wrongdoers are not sorry? What if the person has no remorse for his trespasses? What if the person does it again? Or what if she doesn’t change?” We give them power over our decision to forgive. We allow them to influence us in the way we want to live our life.
Schell said, “Don’t put conditions on your forgiveness, or your inner peace will depend on the decision of the person who hurt you. Make your own choice. Forgive even when there has been no apology or restitution. If you withhold forgiveness until wrong is made right, you risk condemning yourself to a life sentence of bitterness; you risk letting your life be shaped by someone else’s.”
Let us not forget, when we forgive, we are putting ourselves back in control.
(Posted in behalf of Fr. Nony)
Mt.18:21-35
Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times”(Mt. 18. 22-23).
Peter asked the Lord how many times does one have to forgive. Jesus told him, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.” Why did Jesus say this? When we are doing something good and beautiful, we want to repeat it endlessly. Forgiveness is something beautiful and it must be done endlessly.
What is Forgiveness? When we are wronged we carry pains in our hearts. Deep within us we feel the need to protect our pride and demand justice for the unfair actions done to us. If we are thinking that seeing our offenders punished for what they have done, would give us some peace of mind, we are mistaken. The key to inner peace is not revenge but forgiveness. Forgiveness is the only choice that we can make to have a peaceful heart. To forgive is to use our creative power to heal the wounds of the past that we cannot change. We want to be healed by forgiving those people whom we blame for wronging and wounding us. While forgiveness may be an unnatural response to the wrongs done to us, it is the only remedy to heal our pain.
One time, I was watching the news and it’s about the son of Lydia De Vega (Philippine sprint queen) who was killed when hit by a passenger jeep. She loved her son very much and mourned his death. However, she did not sue the driver. She said, “I already lost my son because of what happened. I don’t want the children of this driver to suffer the loss of their father if he will be incarcerated. One loss is enough.”
Isn’t this inspiring?
Why do we need to forgive? We need to forgive not only because it is an opportunity to be like Jesus to our wrongdoers. We need to forgive because this is what is good for us. We want to forgive not because we condone the wrongs done to us but we simply want to give peace to ourselves. The decision to forgive is an act of charity for others and for ourselves. Schell said, “To refuse to forgive is to continue to hurt yourself. Victimized once, your lack of forgiveness keeps you stuck as a victim, holding on to a victim’s identity.” We need to forgive because we don’t want to live a disturbed, agitated, and distressed life. Forgiveness is about the quality of our life. Whenever we ask the questions: “What if our wrongdoers are not sorry? What if the person has no remorse for his trespasses? What if the person does it again? Or what if she doesn’t change?” We give them power over our decision to forgive. We allow them to influence us in the way we want to live our life.
Schell said, “Don’t put conditions on your forgiveness, or your inner peace will depend on the decision of the person who hurt you. Make your own choice. Forgive even when there has been no apology or restitution. If you withhold forgiveness until wrong is made right, you risk condemning yourself to a life sentence of bitterness; you risk letting your life be shaped by someone else’s.”
Let us not forget, when we forgive, we are putting ourselves back in control.
(Posted in behalf of Fr. Nony)
Friday, September 02, 2005
A Spiritual Veggie
23rd Sunday A
"Where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in their midst"
Matthew 18:20
There is a wonderful story about a family with one house rule that always was strictly enforced: everyone's plate had to be cleaned at every meal, without question or discussion of any kind. And the rule included vegetables. At first, the children griped a lot, but soon they fell in the spirit of the rule and eating every morsel on the plate became almost automatic to them. Moreover, the rule began to pay great dividends for the children after a sign was posted in the school lunch-room. It read: "No dessert until you show your empty plate." The children of that family had no problem with that lunch-room edict, and the eleven-year-old even found a way in which to turn it into a fantastic enterprise. This was revealed when his father stumbled onto a cigar box loaded with $38 in small change tucked away in the boy's bedroom closet. The parent had no notion of how his eleven-year-old son had come into such a sum. Fearing the worst, he asked the boy about it. "I earned it at school," the boy explained. "The other kids pay me to eat their vegetables. I charge a nickel for spinach, ten cents for broccoli and fifteen cents for cauliflower."
That, I am told, is a true story, and an excellent one to remember when we are tempted to question God's silence. We pray and we pray, and we wait and we wait for some comforting answer but we hear no response and we ask "Why?" "Why doesn't God answer our prayers?" Or we come here to Church for worship and prayer together and we hear the Gospel Lesson teaching us that Jesus is right there in the midst of it when two or three are gathered in His Name, and it all sounds very appealing, but nothing is happening. Here we are in God's House, in God's Presence. Jesus is in our midst, and nothing is happening. It's all very ho-hum and humdrum, just like last week and the week before that. Why? I suspect the answer for many of us is that we are not eating our own spiritual spinach. We pray that our lives will be enriched. We want peace of mind and soul. We want to live inspired lives, to grow and develop to our full potential. We want fulfillment. We want the new life that Jesus and the Gospels and the sermons are always promising us. In short, we want the truly good things in life but we do not want to pay the price. We want our lives to soar on undernourished wings. But we'll never get off the ground that way. Distasteful as it may seem, we simply must eat our own spiritual spinach or there will be no spiritual growth, no effective prayer experience, and no happenings here in Church when two or three, or three hundred are gathered together. Week after week we can assemble here as we have today, but if we are not eating our own spiritual spinach we are not gathering together in Jesus' Name. And we shall continue to move from this uneventful worship and prayer experience to the next, and the next, and the next ...
You cannot have your dessert until your plates are clean! The most important thing you can do with your life right now is to embark on a plate-cleaning inward journey, deep down into the center of your being-the point of direct encounter with the love and the power and the Grace of God. We are talking about that deep, deep level where the soul is laid bare, where the real stock-taking occurs, where the spinach is swallowed and the plate is picked so clean you can see your reflection in it as clearly as when you do the dishes with Ivory Liquid. We are talking about that deep, deep level at which you can see yourself as you really are and where you can make honest decisions about your life, about who you are and what you ought to do. We are talking about that deep, deep level where the cost of fulfillment is revealed as the bitterest of all spiritual spinach: change. To admit that you will be unable to enrich your own personhood, fulfill your life, become the beautiful, unique human being God created you to be unless you change radically, is a bitter potion for you to swallow.
Into the midst of His People Jesus came. He announced the Good News of a loving God who would bring them to fulfillment. Through who He was and what He did He revealed to His People the image of the God of Love. He offered Himself as the Supreme Model for a proper response to their loving God. And His People decided that He must die. They couldn't stand the love of God in their midst. Jesus had made it clear that in order to follow after the Model they would have to make radical changes in their accustomed life-styles. They needed to change their ways of relating to one another and to outsiders. And they could not stand it. They refused to let go of things-as-they-were. It threatened their security, their ego, their pocketbook and their spiritless, rigid religiosity. Jesus came with the Good News that a loving God was offering them a better way. Life would be enriched by a whole new spirit, a whole new value system. Their lives would be raised up, out of the pit of purposelessness and on to a new level of lasting meaning. All this would come to those who would repent (i.e., change radically) and follow Him. But they could not stand that spiritual spinach. And so they nailed the Prophet to a tree and He died in their midst.
Do we want a dead Jesus or a live Jesus in our midst? Do we opt now for things-as-they-are or for things-as-they-ought-to-be? Go down deep, where you can see and feel and embrace the living Christ in your midst. And ...
-If you are involved presently in a relationship or a habit that is potentially destructive to yourself and others, then decide down at that deep, self-revealing level whether or not you are going to change all that
-If you are involved presently in a business or a job that profits from the deception and exploitation of other human beings, then decide at that deep self-revealing level whether or not you are going to change all that
-If you are a self-righteous person, grown used to condemning others out of hand, then decide at that deep, self-revealing level whether or not you are going to change all that
-If your family life is sick for want of your love and compassion and forgiveness, then decide at that deep, self-revealing level whether or not you are going to change all that
-If you are a person who is content to have an abundance of material resources while others have not even the means of survival, then decide at that deep self-revealing level whether or not you are ready to make a radical change in your attitude toward the poor and the downtrodden
At a high school commencement exercise, one of the senior girls delivered a closing prayer which she herself had written. The young woman began to read her prayer at that time when the confusion and the shifting at the edges of the crowd begins, as people's thoughts turn to the parking lot. But, as the prayer unfolded, the noise quickly subsided and a miraculous silence settled over the crowd. It lasted until the last word of the prayer was uttered. Here is a portion of that prayer:
Dear God, grant us one thing before we leave the sheltered reassurance of our childhood. Show us Life. Not an empty, shallow world of shallow people and shallow dreams, but real life ... For we have known the bliss of childhood as well as the passion of adolescence now. We've heard the cry of babies, and we've seen the fear of death on a soldier's face. We want to change the world but we don't know how. We want to throw our arms around our brothers but our hands cannot reach. We want to break the bonds of conformity that tie us to the ground, but we're not strong. Smile on us when we drink from the waters of truth. And, when we are old, reassure us that our struggle helped to make the world a world of peace, compassion and wisdom. And please don't let us die without ever having lived ... May we feel God's love always in our lives!
"Where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in their midst"
Matthew 18:20
There is a wonderful story about a family with one house rule that always was strictly enforced: everyone's plate had to be cleaned at every meal, without question or discussion of any kind. And the rule included vegetables. At first, the children griped a lot, but soon they fell in the spirit of the rule and eating every morsel on the plate became almost automatic to them. Moreover, the rule began to pay great dividends for the children after a sign was posted in the school lunch-room. It read: "No dessert until you show your empty plate." The children of that family had no problem with that lunch-room edict, and the eleven-year-old even found a way in which to turn it into a fantastic enterprise. This was revealed when his father stumbled onto a cigar box loaded with $38 in small change tucked away in the boy's bedroom closet. The parent had no notion of how his eleven-year-old son had come into such a sum. Fearing the worst, he asked the boy about it. "I earned it at school," the boy explained. "The other kids pay me to eat their vegetables. I charge a nickel for spinach, ten cents for broccoli and fifteen cents for cauliflower."
That, I am told, is a true story, and an excellent one to remember when we are tempted to question God's silence. We pray and we pray, and we wait and we wait for some comforting answer but we hear no response and we ask "Why?" "Why doesn't God answer our prayers?" Or we come here to Church for worship and prayer together and we hear the Gospel Lesson teaching us that Jesus is right there in the midst of it when two or three are gathered in His Name, and it all sounds very appealing, but nothing is happening. Here we are in God's House, in God's Presence. Jesus is in our midst, and nothing is happening. It's all very ho-hum and humdrum, just like last week and the week before that. Why? I suspect the answer for many of us is that we are not eating our own spiritual spinach. We pray that our lives will be enriched. We want peace of mind and soul. We want to live inspired lives, to grow and develop to our full potential. We want fulfillment. We want the new life that Jesus and the Gospels and the sermons are always promising us. In short, we want the truly good things in life but we do not want to pay the price. We want our lives to soar on undernourished wings. But we'll never get off the ground that way. Distasteful as it may seem, we simply must eat our own spiritual spinach or there will be no spiritual growth, no effective prayer experience, and no happenings here in Church when two or three, or three hundred are gathered together. Week after week we can assemble here as we have today, but if we are not eating our own spiritual spinach we are not gathering together in Jesus' Name. And we shall continue to move from this uneventful worship and prayer experience to the next, and the next, and the next ...
You cannot have your dessert until your plates are clean! The most important thing you can do with your life right now is to embark on a plate-cleaning inward journey, deep down into the center of your being-the point of direct encounter with the love and the power and the Grace of God. We are talking about that deep, deep level where the soul is laid bare, where the real stock-taking occurs, where the spinach is swallowed and the plate is picked so clean you can see your reflection in it as clearly as when you do the dishes with Ivory Liquid. We are talking about that deep, deep level at which you can see yourself as you really are and where you can make honest decisions about your life, about who you are and what you ought to do. We are talking about that deep, deep level where the cost of fulfillment is revealed as the bitterest of all spiritual spinach: change. To admit that you will be unable to enrich your own personhood, fulfill your life, become the beautiful, unique human being God created you to be unless you change radically, is a bitter potion for you to swallow.
Into the midst of His People Jesus came. He announced the Good News of a loving God who would bring them to fulfillment. Through who He was and what He did He revealed to His People the image of the God of Love. He offered Himself as the Supreme Model for a proper response to their loving God. And His People decided that He must die. They couldn't stand the love of God in their midst. Jesus had made it clear that in order to follow after the Model they would have to make radical changes in their accustomed life-styles. They needed to change their ways of relating to one another and to outsiders. And they could not stand it. They refused to let go of things-as-they-were. It threatened their security, their ego, their pocketbook and their spiritless, rigid religiosity. Jesus came with the Good News that a loving God was offering them a better way. Life would be enriched by a whole new spirit, a whole new value system. Their lives would be raised up, out of the pit of purposelessness and on to a new level of lasting meaning. All this would come to those who would repent (i.e., change radically) and follow Him. But they could not stand that spiritual spinach. And so they nailed the Prophet to a tree and He died in their midst.
Do we want a dead Jesus or a live Jesus in our midst? Do we opt now for things-as-they-are or for things-as-they-ought-to-be? Go down deep, where you can see and feel and embrace the living Christ in your midst. And ...
-If you are involved presently in a relationship or a habit that is potentially destructive to yourself and others, then decide down at that deep, self-revealing level whether or not you are going to change all that
-If you are involved presently in a business or a job that profits from the deception and exploitation of other human beings, then decide at that deep self-revealing level whether or not you are going to change all that
-If you are a self-righteous person, grown used to condemning others out of hand, then decide at that deep, self-revealing level whether or not you are going to change all that
-If your family life is sick for want of your love and compassion and forgiveness, then decide at that deep, self-revealing level whether or not you are going to change all that
-If you are a person who is content to have an abundance of material resources while others have not even the means of survival, then decide at that deep self-revealing level whether or not you are ready to make a radical change in your attitude toward the poor and the downtrodden
At a high school commencement exercise, one of the senior girls delivered a closing prayer which she herself had written. The young woman began to read her prayer at that time when the confusion and the shifting at the edges of the crowd begins, as people's thoughts turn to the parking lot. But, as the prayer unfolded, the noise quickly subsided and a miraculous silence settled over the crowd. It lasted until the last word of the prayer was uttered. Here is a portion of that prayer:
Dear God, grant us one thing before we leave the sheltered reassurance of our childhood. Show us Life. Not an empty, shallow world of shallow people and shallow dreams, but real life ... For we have known the bliss of childhood as well as the passion of adolescence now. We've heard the cry of babies, and we've seen the fear of death on a soldier's face. We want to change the world but we don't know how. We want to throw our arms around our brothers but our hands cannot reach. We want to break the bonds of conformity that tie us to the ground, but we're not strong. Smile on us when we drink from the waters of truth. And, when we are old, reassure us that our struggle helped to make the world a world of peace, compassion and wisdom. And please don't let us die without ever having lived ... May we feel God's love always in our lives!
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