It is Right and Just: Reflections on the Readings for the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

If you haven’t already read the readings you can find them here.

Ezekiel 18:25-28
Psalm 25
Philippians 2:1-11
Matthew 21:28-32

We all say that we love justice and demand it, especially when we feel wronged. However, when we are the ones in the dock it’s mercy we look for, not justice. After all, if God truly meted out justice according to the way we live our lives, we would all be on the down elevator. Thinking honestly about this we recognize our unworthiness and the fact that our arrogance gets us into trouble. The antidote to pride is humility. Humility requires us to look beyond ourselves and turn away from our wicked ways to God’s ways.

As Ezekiel tells us, God’s ways involve doing what is right and just. We use that phrase in the Eucharistic prayer, “it is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks.” And what are we thankful for? We are thankful that God is both just and merciful. He gives us the opportunity to turn away from the sins we have committed and find life. In several of the psalms we are told, “the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness.” (Psalm 145, for example)

We don’t truly understand this except that it is a feature of God’s unlimited love for us. As we heard last week, God’s ways are so high above ours. We may not like it because we don’t truly understand and our egos object. “A soul that is bursting with its own ego can never be filled with God … The more empty the soul is of self, the greater the room in it for God.” Fulton Sheen, The World’s First Love

But we must realize that God, as the creator is always right. I used to put it this way, especially when met with a conflict between the secular zeitgeist (spirit of the age) and God’s ways: “politically or impolitically, God is always correct.”

The responsorial psalm is actually a prayer of humility. The psalmist is asking the Lord to teach him His ways, “guide me in your truth.” By doing so he is acknowledging his need for continual guidance from God. Rather than saying something like, “show me that my ways are good or OK,” he is asking that the Lord show him, a sinner, the way. Thus he works with the humble, guides them to justice (to the justice mentioned by Ezekiel). Dr. Kreeft puts it this way, “God sees that we need to learn humility. And God can work with the humble who trust Him; He can’t work with the proud who won’t.” Dr. Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul, Cycle C

Kneeling before someone or genuflecting is a sign of humility. It is acknowledging that you are in the presence of someone or something greater than you. A humorous example of this is the movie, The King and I, taken from the story, Anna and the King of Siam. In the movie the king is played by Yul Brynner who repeatedly insists that Anna, whom he had hired to teach is children, should not allow her head rise above his.

In the second reading, Paul reminds us of the humility of Jesus. Jesus was God and yet he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Why the emphasis of “death on a cross?” Because, in Jesus’ day, death on a cross was the lowest form of execution. Not only was it excruciatingly painful (note the “crux,” or cross, in the middle of that word) but it was humiliating at the same time. It was considered, in Roman terms, cruel and unusual punishment, the prohibition of which we have in our own constitution. It was prohibited by Roman law to sentence a Roman citizen to crucifixion. This is why St. Paul was transferred to Rome and eventually beheaded, because he was a Roman citizen and, therefore, could not be crucified.

During Mass the priest also refers to Christ’s humility when, during the mixing of the water with the wine, he (or the deacon) says, “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” And, as an example of Jesus own words, “Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” See Matthew 23:12, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

In the gospel Jesus approaches the problem from the opposite direction; the problem of pride. He uses the example of the two sons, one who initially tells the father he won’t do what is asked but then swallows his pride and goes out into the vineyard. The other son deceptively agrees to do what the father asks but then does what he wants rather than what the father wants. The importance of this example is not only the problem of pride but of the obedience to the father. Then Jesus chides the scribes and pharisees for their self-righteousness and refusal to believe John the Baptist, noting that their pride is the reason that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before them. John was baptizing for repentance (Matthew 3:11) and they, recognizing their sinfulness, believed and were willing to humble themselves and be baptized.

How often do we look at someone else and think to ourselves (and maybe even say it out loud), “I am better than you”? Do we understand that we are expressing pride? Recall that everyone is made in the image and likeness of God. Yes, we are all different, but we all possess the dignity of humanity with equal measure. And this is the intrinsic evil of things like abortion and euthanasia. They are dehumanizing.

Think of Steven Hawking. At age 21 he developed a neural disease that eventually almost totally paralyzed him. Yet he is acknowledged as one of the greatest scientific minds of the past century. In Canada (and in some states) today they would want to euthanize him. If this disease were detectable prior to birth, his parents today would be encouraged to abort him. The loss to science would be almost immeasurable, but that’s the society we live in today. Who knows how many other brilliant minds have been snuffed out by abortion because their parents either felt too challenged to bring them up or because they “couldn’t handle a baby now,” or because they felt they could do better than God by killing an “imperfect” baby. This is what is going on in my home state today (and in several others); amendments to state constitutions that do away with all restrictions against abortion throughout pregnancy.

“A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope.” Pope St. John Paul II