Reflection for 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time – A

My Dear Brothers and Sisters

God gave us free will. We are responsible for our life, our behavior, words, deeds and decisions. And because of that free will, one day each one of us will have stand in front of God and be judged for our good deeds or bad. The good news is that with the help of God’s grace we can change the direction of our lives for the better.

The Liturgy, the Eucharist points out that there must be a connection between what we say and what we do.

Jesus criticized some of the people in leadership of his days because they did not live up to what they promised. Their promises were empty, they said yes to God and did nothing to fulfill that yes; and because of that they were not pleasing God. Jesus tells them that their observance of the law was an outward show and that there has to be more honesty and a greater readiness to accept the call for repentance.

Jesus told us a beautiful story. And this story is for all ages. Each of us has points of inconsistency between what we promised and what we did or do. The lesson the gospel offers us is that we may be saying “yes” to God on Sunday and turning our back on what we profess during the rest of the week. Many of us who say “yes” to the Body of Christ during Holy Mass completely forget what we promise to Jesus during the week. Very often we behave like the second son from today’s Gospel.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters

I know who we would like to be in today’s Gospel. Of course we would like be the one who would say NO but actually go and fulfill God’s request.

The choice is ours. We can do even better than the son who eventually did the work. We can say YES and do the work of God. So as God’s children, let put all differences behind us and let’s start to say yes our God every day of our life.

After the homily we are going to profess our faith. I would encourage everybody to think what we profess, and live that profession this week, and all the weeks of our life.