Doing the Father's Will

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Many of Jesus parables are directed against the chief priests, elders, scribes and pharisees.  These are the people who looked up to as examples, people who might be expected to do the will of God.  They are the ones who might be expected to understand the message of John the Baptist and of Jesus.  However, Jesus regularly condemns them for their failure to understand and their hypocrisy.  This rejection by the leaders is what leads to Jesus crucifixion.  One reason why this attack on these leaders is such a common theme in the Gospel is because the Christian community for whom it is written has shared in Jesus experience.  They too have been rejected, been ejected from the synagogues and are experiencing persecution. 

However, our experience is different.  What has this all to do with us we might ask?  We are neither first century Pharisees, nor have we experienced kind of rejection known by the early Chrisitans.  What this parable does for us is to make us reflect on ourselves.  Most of you reading this will be Catholics who regularly come to Mass when you are able.  In that sense we are people who might be expected to do the will of God, people others are likely to look to take a moral lead.  That is the challenge of today’s Gospel.  As we reflect on ourselves do we see something of the elder son, are there times in our lives when we profess our faith in Christian moral principles but to not actually live them out.  As we hear about the Pharisees it should lead us to examine our own consciences.  Do our lives reflect that of Christ?  Paul spells that out in the second reading, “there must be no competition among you, no conceit; but everybody is to be self-effacing.  Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so that nobody thinks of his own interests first but everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead”.  In the longer version of the reading he goes on to quote what is probably a hymn setting out the example of Christ, “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God….” 

It is that self-sacrificing example of Christ we need to examine if we are to ask ourselves if we are really doing the will of God. 

There is of course an opposite danger in this for some people.  We may be too ready to see ourselves as the elder son, see the ways in which we are failing to carry out the will of God and fall into despair.  Yes, we will fail from time to time to live out the requirements of the Gospel but we must always trust in the mercy of God.  In that other parable about two sons, the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke’s Gospel, we see the Father who is always ready to welcome us back, no matter how far we have wandered away. 

Let us trust in God’s mercy then, but let us also ask God’s grace that we might truly do the will of our Father in the way our faith requires. 

Fr Chris Pedley SJ