There is an old saying – “talk is cheap”. It basically means that it is one thing to talk about the things we are promising to do, it is another to actually do them so that there is value in what we say. If all we do is talk a good game, our words mean nothing. This applies to all of us, in all we do, and it certainly applies to our faith.

We may know scripture, we may even be able to quote it chapter and verse, but if we don’t live out what it proclaims the knowledge and words we profess are not only worthless, but downright hypocritical. Our Lord detests hypocrisy. He didn’t like it in the days when He confronted the Scribes and the Pharisees (the politicians of the day), and He didn’t put up with it from anyone else He encountered. He wanted to keep things real, and that meant putting a lot more stock in how people lived, than in what they knew or said. He didn’t pick Peter to lead His Church because he was a brilliant speaker or theologian. He picked him because Peter, flawed though he was at times, tried to do the right thing, he tried to live in such a way that emulated our Lord, and followed his commands. He was not perfect at doing so, but he kept trying and those around him could see the effort. People, more often than not, listen to and retain words for a relatively brief period of time. However, when we see living examples of an important lesson, we remember it and ponder it for much longer.

Our Gospel today shows us two paths that can be taken, the first is to talk a good game like the first son, and then do nothing, leading to disappointment, disillusionment, and anger when it is learned that there was no follow through. The second, is to maybe get off to a slow start and not want to engage, perhaps even refusing to do so, but then to realize the error of our ways, and change our minds and our direction so that we do what is asked of us, and actually produce good works. This applies to many different areas of our lives, whether it be in our everyday interactions with others, or our following God’s call to work in His vineyard. The value and integrity come from what we do, and in how we serve. God does not expect perfection from us any more than He did from Peter, but like any parent He is overjoyed when we turn ourselves around and come back to His teachings and live them out.   

Every one of us, has a unique path to be followed in pursuing our relationship with God. He had devised a plan for you and I long before we ever came into being, and guess what, He did it without consulting us or asking any advice on what our preferences were for the content, the style, or the timeline of how our lives and our relationship with Him would play out. If that sounds like I am being a bit condescending in the way I am phrasing this, your right, but only because it is the dialogue that I use with myself when I need a reminder that Gods plan for me doesn’t require my approval, critiques, or consultation – ever. What is more, I don’t think I am the only one that sometimes questions or even gets a bit frustrated with not being privy to what God has in store for me, or how that contrasts with what I think I see him doing within other peoples lives.

Why is it that sometimes others seem to be so much further along in their knowledge and depth of faith than I seem to be? Why do they seem to just “get it” when it comes to understanding the Gospel message, and I in contrast seem to need to study and struggle just to gain a bit of insight? Why do others sometimes seem to just skate along when I must struggle? These are all very human questions, if perhaps a bit self-indulgent. Yet we struggle with these sometimes. We even grumble about how we think we are being treated relative to what we think we observe in the status of others. The thing is, more often than not, we don’t know the full story, because unlike our Lord, we have no idea what those other people have been through, or what burdens they currently carry – all we see is the surface.

We can be pretty sure the vineyard workers that were grumbling against the owner in our Gospel today did not take the time to ponder the actual fairness of what they received. They got the promised wage, one that would help sustain them and their families, yet all they chose to see was that someone appeared to have gotten a bit more, in the sense that it appeared to be more easily attained. They looked only to their own struggles, their own discomfort, their own time expended. It never occurred to them that in the end – they had received their reward, and that the reward was still of great value to them. When we seem to struggle for understanding God’s plan, or for being able to find within ourselves that fragment of faith that will see us through, and in contrast see others who don’t seem to need to labor as much, we might need to consider what else in their lives we are not seeing. What they have struggled with, and what They may very well be carrying now that we are unaware of, and instead be grateful for the graces that we have received, and for the opportunity to struggle a bit. Working for something, and persevering through difficult situations makes what is gained all the more valuable and memorable. Our Lord sees our struggles as precious, because He intimately knows at what cost our understanding of Him, and our faith in Him sometimes comes. Perhaps we need do need to work a bit harder to understand His plan, perhaps it may take us a bit longer to realize all that we need to learn, perhaps that is just the uniqueness of the perfect plan that He has devised for each one of us, and that we have been on our whole lives even if we did not always realize it. Perhaps, we just need to be grateful for the graces we HAVE received.

It should frighten any of us that our Lord would remember our sins in detail and hold us accountable at that level. Yet that is precisely what we hear in our reading from Sirach. If we do not forgive others and continue to ruminate and ponder in detail all that has been done to offend us, so will the Lord remember and hold accountable our own sins in as much detail. I don’t know about you, but that is not something I want, and it makes me shudder to think about all those things coming back to haunt me.

Yet sometimes it can seem incredibly difficult to let go of these things. I think perhaps that is because we approach the process with an incorrect understanding of what it means to forgive. We may think that this means we will put all of the things that have been done to us aside and we won’t even remember them anymore. Yet, this is not usually the case. The human person is a funny thing, we often can’t recall what we ate for supper the previous day, but we can reach back years and recall some slight or offense, so the notion that we will simply forget these things is not going to fly. However, that is not what we are after, in forgiving others we are instead seeking to not continue to hold anger, resentment, and malice toward them – these things simply give power to past memories and the evil one who wants us to still live in that past rather than looking to the brightness of the future which our Lord has in store for us. Instead, we hope that God will touch them in some way that is beneficial to their own well-being. We consciously release them from our own grasp that seeks retribution, and instead look to God for the peace that comes when we are freed from a heavy burden and can then walk lightly and unencumbered. This is not always easy and will require prayer for the grace to do this, just as we pray for the grace to be released from our own sins. If we truly approach our forgiveness of others with the understanding that the resentment and anger that we hold is really only harming us, both within ourselves, but also with our relationship with God, we will realize the cost is not worth it.

Even when others have harmed us repeatedly, we are called to forgive. This does not mean that we keep going back and expecting they will treat us differently. We are called to be prudent and to avoid such situations, until such time as we see that Gods grace has taken hold of them and produced a change of heart. Yet, we are still called to forgive, no matter how many times they have transgressed. We pray for them and ask that they be touched with Gods grace and truly change – we show pity for them that they are in such a wretched state.

There is no getting around this call to forgive. As followers of Christ, we are called to do this because in doing so we fulfill the two greatest commandments – to love others, and in doing so to love our Lord because all others were created in His image, even those we find the most difficult to reconcile with.   

People are sometimes a bit surprised when I say this, but did you know that as a baptized Catholic, you are also a priest? Each of us through the grace of Baptism, is part of the common priesthood. What is more, with participation in that common priesthood, comes responsibility.

Each of us is called to truly love those around us. This is the first and foremost responsibility in participating in God’s plan, as being part of this priesthood. The thing is, this can be more difficult than it sounds. We are called to truly love, at the highest level, self-sacrificing love – Agape’. This is the love with which Christ loved each of us, and for which He sacrificed himself for us. If we are to call ourselves followers of Christ, then this is our call as well. We must be willing to die to self each day as part of our taking up our own crosses, and to focus on our brothers and sisters instead. This means not only giving up much of our own self-interest, but also being willing to step outside our comfort zone to be messengers of God’s truth so that our brothers and sisters can benefit from hearing His word. It means being willing to have hard conversations when necessary, and to do so in a wholly loving way.

Every one of God’s prophets and priests, has had to heed this call. Ezekiel heard it very directly – “You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel”. Saint Paul demonstrated this in his profession of the commands that God had conveyed. Our Lord himself, who is Priest, Prophet, and King tells us that when we see our brothers or sisters’ sin, we must help them. We must approach them lovingly, we must be honest with them, and we must pray for them.

The truth is not always an easy thing to convey, it requires commitment and fortitude that can only come from asking God’s help in carrying out His command. We CANNOT do this ourselves; we must always humbly approach Him and ask for help in fulfilling this responsibility. We need the courage, wisdom, and patience that only He can provide us at the needed moment, and in the proper form and proportion so that the words that we speak in His name will have the efficacy that is needed. We do this to show our love for His other creations, and in doing so, our love for Him. His gift then to us, is our own salvation, as servants who have been faithful to their master’s call, and carried out what He has tasked each of us with. It is a timeless calling and is both as needed and as relevant today as it was in all ages.        

In our readings this week, we hear much of conscious choice to yield our own desires to those of God. This is not always an easy thing to do. We are used to pursuing our own plans and designs, but there comes a time when we need to gain perspective about where those plans and designs really fall in the grand scheme of things, and do they in any way impede us from following God’s call to serve Him?

The prophet Jeremiah was reluctant indeed to continue to speak Gods word to the people because of all the mockery he endured, and even speaks of being duped or tricked by the Lord into doing so. Yet he knows there is no backing away from speaking what he knows to be right because it is the word that comes from God and as he describes it, burns within him. He simply cannot hold back.

Saint Paul also speaks to us of sacrifice, and of living our lives in such a way that is pleasing to God. He tells us that we must not conform ourselves to this age, but rather look at what is timeless in its wisdom and value. To pursue Gods call, even when the world tries to constantly drag us in the opposite direction by trying to convince us that God is an outdated concept. To renew ourselves in such a way that we dismiss what is of human value, and instead cling to what is value to God. In every age, there have been forces that tried to draw Gods people away from Him, I sometimes wonder what Saint Paul would have to say if he saw how much that effort seems to have increased in our world today.

In our Gospel today, the call to think as God does, and not as humans do, is once again echoed. This time it is the words of our Lord himself in his rebuke to Peter when He tells him of what is to come. Peters’ reaction is a very human one, he does not wish any harm to come to Jesus whom he loves and has grown ever closer to over the years they and the other disciples have spent traveling and living together. I can honestly understand his feelings of wanting to be protective of someone he cares so deeply about. Yet, this is still a human response, and one that is in direct opposition to what Jesus knows needs to be accomplished, and so His rebuke is sharp. It is not to be unkind but rather to give Peter a sense of perspective in how human desires, not matter how seemingly caring and right, do not always align with Gods plan, or with the truths that need to be expressed. He tells Peter, and us, that our lives and cares in this world are completely secondary to the plan that is known only to God, and that each of us must come to realize how subservient our designs and cares must be in relation to Gods plan. This can be tremendously hard to keep in mind sometimes because much of what we feel is important seems so justifiable to us. Yet we must always be vigilantly humble enough to trust not in ourselves, but in His timeless word and plan.

In our Gospel today we hear the ultimate question, both for those who were there when it was asked, and for us all these centuries later – “Who do you say that I am?”. This question is one that we have all grappled with as we have yearned to grow in faith and is the single most important declaration we can make once we have come to terms with our answer. When we affirm, like Peter, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, everything changes because we are no longer under the weight of the law and have a savior who lifts us up so that our burden is taken upon His own shoulders.

When Peter affirmed that Jesus was the Christ, he became the rock upon which God would build His Church in this world. He would lead, and be the first Pope, and have the power to make decisions that would be bound or loosed both on earth and in heaven. This was an awesome responsibility for a simple fisherman from Galilea, but one that was possible because Jesus chose and empowered him to do so. It was not through Peters force of will, or personal attributes that this could be accomplished, it was because of Peters professed faith and reliance upon Him who can do all things. What is more, this did not end with Peter, it is very clear from the writings of the early Church that his successors were accepted by the people because they understood our Lords intent – to not leave them without a shepherd here on earth, and it is still the case today.

For each of us who call Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, and freely profess that He is God, we echo the fulfillment of belief that our Lord heard from Peter. We may not be perfect, but we are indeed saved in the sense that our Lord finds us to be His followers. Human beings, including Popes, are not perfect people, we struggle, we sometimes fail, but we have faith in the one who gave up His life for us, and so we have reason to rejoice that we are loved despite our imperfections. No matter where we go, not matter who else in our lives may ignore, reject, or otherwise cause us pain, we can count on the one who took all our pains upon Himself and loves us always.

We hear in today’s Gospel about Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman, a woman from the Syrophoenician region, who was not of Jewish descent. When this woman asks our Lord for help with her daughter who is suffering, His response seems uncharacteristically terse. He seems to initially refuse her request, yet when she makes plain that she has deep faith in him, He grants her request because of this. The takeaway is simply this – He did come to save the children of Israel, but He also finds acceptable all who come to Him in faith. The message of acceptance, of all people being acceptable to God, is good news for most of us, since by and large we do not have direct roots to Israel as part of our lineage. We can still have hope though, if we come to our Lord in faith and like the Canaanite woman ask Him to find us worthy of His love and help.

There is a second lesson to be taken from all of this though, and one that often escapes notice when talking about this encounter. That lesson is one of acceptance that we ourselves need to apply to all of our dealings with others. It is clear from this Gospel that our Lord finds acceptable all peoples, and we are called to do the same. I think this is especially important to understand today, because I do not recall in all my years on this earth a time when people were more sharply divided than today. We seem to find fault in nearly every definable characteristic of those we encounter.

If our Lord accepts all of us, and desires that each of us come to Him and find salvation, no matter who we are, what we look like, or what we have done in the past – who then are we to find so much fault with others that our first instinct is to reject their company? Jesus came to us, to save us, not because of our perfection as individuals, but because we are all riddled with imperfections and problems, baggage and sins that should by all rights find us guilty of condemnation, and yet that is exactly what He did not come to do. He did not come to condemn but to save. He expects us to do likewise because we are called to walk in His footsteps. This is not an easy calling, but it is the only one that leads to life – it is the narrow gate that so few can pass through. Only those who eventually let go of all the garbage that encumbers us, like prejudice, judgmental attitudes, self-aggrandizing, and hate will make it through. We sometimes hear people speak of their lack of acceptance of others who are part of some grouping that does not on the surface seem to follow Christs teaching to the letter, as though such judgement was some kind of badge of honor – or who seemingly take pride in writing off those they deem to be less pious than themselves. They are totally oblivious to the fact that there is only one fit to judge, and NONE of us is Him. Our job is much simpler – we are here to be a help to all, to try to guide those on the wrong track lovingly toward a better understanding of Gods message – and if they don’t seem to get it at first, to not give up or write them off – EVER. To be patient, to be kind, to be shepherds who are always willing to help His sheep along is our call, and in doing so to show our own true understanding of His teaching.     

In our Gospel today, we hear something that can cause us a bit of consternation – we are told that we must be careful about things that we can be drawn into loving more than God. This statement is very similar to what we hear in John 12:25 where we hear that if we do not hate our very lives, then we will lose them. In each case, the message is that we must put love of Jesus Christ first, and all else should be frankly trivial in comparison.

This can sometimes be a difficult thing to put into practice, even if we understand this intellectually, it can present challenges to be put into practice. Why – you may ask? Well to put it simply, it is difficult to truly love someone with that kind of intensity and priority, when we do not really have a solid connection with them. We see, or perhaps talk with those whom we have close relationships with, such as parents, children, friends, etc. rather frequently, but if we are not doing the same with our Lord, then having even that degree of intimacy is difficult, to say nothing of having the even greater degree that we are called to. 

This should illustrate for us the necessity of frequent time spent with our Lord. We can spend time in prayer, and in going to Church, and in reading our bibles, but I am talking about something that can be even greater in closeness and bonding. To truly spend time with our Lord as we would with someone to whom we share the greatest intimacy. To establish time quietly spent seeking His heart and listening for His quiet voice that comes to us through His Spirit to discern His will for each of us. To immerse ourselves and seek His influence and guidance so that it permeates every aspect of the lives that He has given us. This is the call.

Our Lord does not seek to control us, He has given us the precious gift of free will, what He seeks is a desire on our part because of the intimacy, understanding, and trust that we share to draw close to Him. To lose ourselves, our very lives, so that immersed in Him we WANT to live our lives in a manner that reflects His teachings – there is a drastic difference between the two. It is out of love and concern for His children that He seeks to guide us to what is good.

Make no mistake, there is a war raging each and every day, just as it has been since the time of Creation. The battle is waged for either the corruption or the preservation of the souls of those whom God has created. The tactics used are often subtle, and the battle is sometimes not readily evident to those who are not attuned to their spiritual selves. Yet the conflict is very real, spiritual warfare and the toll that it has taken, and continues to take upon humanity is very real, and either loss or victory is for the greatest stakes imaginable.

We are confronted each day with choices about how we will conduct ourselves, and what that conduct will convey to others about our beliefs. It may be a situation where we must choose between what we know to be wrong or right, it may be a conversation where we must choose to either stand up for what we believe or allow others to run roughshod over us without saying a word, or it may simply be choosing to remain in the presence of influences that we know to be morally detrimental to us. All of these situations have the potential to either affirm or deny our beliefs in our own sight, the way we are viewed by others, and in what is witnessed by almighty God. There is no mortal that we need ever fear in these conflicts. It is true that others could seek to do us harm when our beliefs conflict with their desires and agendas. Over the life of the Church many have become martyrs because they clung to what they believed, yet even in those instances of human cruelty and death, there was still victory. We do not like to think of physical death, it can be a fearful thing if we let ourselves forget that Christ has already overcome that for us. Yet that is what He did, and in so doing gave us every reason to believe and be fearless in our approach to the struggles and battles of this life. It is God’s judgement alone that we must fear, because of the pure truth that we will one day be confronted with. There is nothing on that day that will not be revealed. This is not a matter of fearing God because of the human obsession with guilt that sometimes comes about, we need to be concerned with an encounter with a purity of truth that we have never yet experienced, and so should strive to be prepared as best we can for the judgement that will follow. That is not to say we should expect perfection, most of us can pretty much put that one to rest because we are all sinners. Yet, we should still strive, just like children who seek to please their parent because they do not wish to disappoint them, knowing that they are still loved in spite of their imperfections. This is the love that God seeks from each of us, and that we need to pursue each and every day.

We are each of us special in God’s eyes, and He values each of us enough to have made the ultimate sacrifice for us. Not a hair on our heads is not accounted for by Him, not a struggle endured for love of Him is ever forgotten, and no one who has sacrificed for Him in emulating His sacrifice for us will ever go unacknowledged. Others will disappoint us in this life, they will cause us pain at times, and will perhaps cause us to grieve, that is the nature of humanity. None of that matters when we are focused on Him.

How often in our lives do we feel like we are going through the motions but are perhaps lacking true direction, like sheep with no one to guide them. This can be something we experience in dealing with the day-to-day challenges of life, but it can certainly also manifest in our spiritual lives as well. In either case, our first thought should be to turn to Christ for the guidance and help that we seek.

When we turn to Jesus Christ, and we approach him with our needs, we can confidently do so in the plainest of language, and the utmost honesty about what we are dealing with. There is no need to “polish” our prayers, our Lord knows all that is going on in our lives anyway. What He seeks from us is simply sincerity and honesty, the things that are part of any relationship with true intimacy. He is not a distant or unapproachable god, He is rather the one who deigned to come to us in our own humble form, because He loves us so much that it was worth it to take on such a lowly state, the better to allow us to understand Him on a whole new level.

There is also another gift that our Lord provided us with, like any good shepherd, He knows the tendencies of His flock, and he put the needed resources in place to help guide them and to care for them. These resources are the laborers that the Master of the Harvest still employs among us to this very day. They help us in healing, in spiritual guidance, in providing counsel, or perhaps just a helping hand. These are the extension of The Twelve that He commissioned and gave authority to, for the care of His flock. We encounter them as those in religious life, as well as those who simply live their lives with Jesus Christ as their focus, and so draw others close to Him as well. We know them by the fruits of their actions, and through that quiet voice within that guides each of us if we will listen.