Faith

Thursday, 20th week in ordinary time – 20th August 2026 – Matthew 22:1-14

Yesterday we were in chapter 20 and today we find ourselves in chapter 22. In between this text, in Chapter 21, Jesus has entered Jerusalem and from now on we listen to narratives that would have taken place in the Holy Week. Jesus has cleansed the temple only to return the next day to be challenged by the Chief Priest and the elders who wanted to know his source of authority. Jesus responds with three parables of judgment and we are in the third one today.

This parable is bizarre at all levels; if not scary. It goes from celebration to decimation in seven verses with its tortured and twisted plots; and there are not one but two of them. But remember that parables are allegories and not realism and hence you have to appreciate the absurdities to appreciate the parable.

In an ancient world where people are literally starving, where a hot meal is a miracle who would turn down a royal feast?! Nobody does that! It is both, economic and political insanity! So you need to understand that this wasn’t a scheduling conflict; this was a declaration of war! We are told that they made “light” of the invitation because they were so addicted to the predictable security of their own farms and their own businesses. They were blinded by the tyranny of the urgent, and they missed the invitation of the eternal!

This invite to tie a knot just got tied in knots! It goes from a celebration to total decimation in a heartbeat because a rejected King will always protect the honor of His Son! The guests decided to murder the messengers, and in doing so, they literally signed their own death warrants! But here is the ultimate twist: the text says the king burned down “their city.” Wait a minute, it was his city! But the moment they chose autonomy over allegiance; they forfeited the property! It became “their” city, and it burned to the ground. It is a dangerous thing to treat the grace of a Monarch like an optional accessory to your life! If you treat His presence like it’s cheap, you’ll find out really quick that His protection isn’t free!

And then there is part two! Those not meant to be invited are invited but one of them is not wearing a wedding garment so he is thrown into the outer darkness. Poor chap he came in for a free meal and now won’t even get a ‘get out of jail card.’ So we need to suss this one out to understand it.

This parable is similar to Luke 14:16-24 and one that is found in the Gospel of Thomas (an apocryphal text) however it is Matthew who added the second part of the story and this is found nowhere else in the Gospels. You must put on a Matthean mindset when reading his parables of Jesus. Matthew’s own community were kicked out by their Jewish brothers who lived down the road and made to feel like outsiders. That’s why when the king burns the city it is referred to as ‘their city’ a reference to Jerusalem which was burnt by the Romans in 70 AD.

The invitation to the wedding was rejected by the Jews who made ‘light’ of the bridegroom. Remember that one of the titles for the Messiah was the bridegroom. Having rejected the call to celebrate the messianic banquet, the Jews led by their chief priest and elders now face the full wrath of the king. The burnt down city of Jerusalem was still fresh in the minds of the Jewish Christians.

Yet Matthew has a parable-within-the parable which has no parallels outside of Matthew, so it must reflect his particular agenda. Matthew wants to make a point to his own people, to the Jewish Christians, who have now been invited to the very banquet which was rejected by their elder brothers in the faith.

It may seem a bit unfair to us that the man without a wedding garment has a legitimate excuse for not wearing one; after all it was a last-minute invite and the city had been burnt down by their own king. Yet Matthew wants to also remind us that the other guests did take the trouble to find one and dress appropriately, after all this was the banquet of the King.

Matthew is making a point to his own community. He wants them to understand that there will be no exceptions to following Jesus. Their standards must be high and their guard must always be up. The banquet hall was made available to them and they have to prove themselves better than their Jewish brothers for whom this party was really set up. There is a warning to the newcomers in this text. Replacing the original guests doesn’t give you permission to repeat their complacency. Grace is Inclusive, but not permissive: You are invited exactly as you are, but you are not permitted to stay exactly as you were.

The message must have really hit hard for verse 15 tells us that the Pharisees went out and plotted to entrap him in what he said.

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Wednesday, 20th week in ordinary time – 19th August 2026 – Matthew 20:1-16a

The parable of the labourers in the vineyard is unique to the Gospel of Matthew and found in no other Gospel.  Matthew, who follows the narrative of the Gospel of St Mark, breaks the flow of St Mark to insert this parable. What then did Matthew want to communicate which the other Gospels did not seem to be too interested in?

We have to constantly place the Gospel of Matthew in its historical and social context. Written in approximately 80 to 90 AD, the Gospel is principally addressed to the Jewish Christian community who lived in some proximity to Jerusalem.  However, the Jewish Christians were not the only ones attracted to the message of Jesus.

Paul, by this time, had already criss-crossed the Roman world. He had evangelized in Antioch, Macedonia, Achaia, Asia Minor and finally in Rome. It is possible, that by the time Matthew had written the Gospel, Paul was already martyred under Emperor Nero. From the Acts of the Apostles, we can safely surmise that the message of Christ found appeal in both Jewish Christians and even more among the Gentile Christians. Here in lies the problem

Central to the council of Jerusalem, which took place in about 49-51 AD (Gal 2:1-10; Acts 15), was the contentious issue of the Gentile converts as a result of Paul’s missionary activity.   Some sections of the Jewish Christians felt that these converts needed to be catechised in the Jewish traditions of circumcision, ethics and dietary habits. The council however, swung in Paul’s favour, albeit with a couple of riders. The Church now began to open its doors to the Gentiles.

The Gospel of Matthew, while keeping its focus on its principal audience of Jewish Christians would have definitely been confronted by the reality of an emerging cosmopolitan Church. By the time Matthew wrote the Gospel, Galilee was more Gentile than Jewish. The Gentile congregation perhaps wanted more say in Matthews’s community; a wish that would certainly be resented by the Jewish Christians.

Look again now at the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. The vineyard was always understood as a symbol for Israel. Ironically, the owner of the vineyard would never go looking for labourers at six in the morning; that was the job of the manager. But not this owner; for He is Jesus.  That leaves us with the labourers; who might they be?

Through the parable, we get a glimpse of the situation that Matthew’s volatile community finds itself in. While the Jewish Christians were the first to answer the call to work in the vineyard, they were not the only ones. In time, and perhaps much later, the Gentile Christians were made welcome to labour in the vineyard. The irony is that all are paid the same, even though the Jewish Christians laboured much more. This was a brewing labour problem no modern-day union would want to be drawn into.

There is one thought that must cross our minds on reading this parable; how can God be so unfair? We are not alone with such thoughts for the Jewish Christians must have felt the same. But Matthew wants us to see Jesus as he did and not as we would like Him to be.  The problem is often in our head, especially when we think we deserve more than others because we came to serve the Lord before they did.

The parable forces a shift from a merit-based mindset to a grace-based mindset. It reveals how difficult it is for human institutions to accept that latecomers receive the exact same status and privileges without “paying their dues.”

The Jewish Christians were not actually losing anything; they received the exact denarius they agreed upon. Their anger was sparked entirely by the generous treatment of the Gentiles. True inclusion often triggers resentment not because our own well-being is diminished, but because the gap between us and “the other” has been closed. The text reflects how privilege reacts when equality is introduced.

For Matthew’s volatile community, this was a warning against spiritual elitism. The Jewish Christians were the foundation of the movement, but if they allowed bitterness to consume them, they would end up on the periphery of what God was doing.

Spiritual and social movements are always vulnerable to generational resentment. The pioneers of a movement often struggle when the doors open wide to outsiders who do not share their history or customs.

The JBC well describes the workers and perhaps us, as ‘victims of the revolution of rising expectation’. The parable focuses on a magnanimous God who is not to be evaluated by our levels of human pettiness.  He is generous by His standards; for if He followed our measures of generosity, how poorer the world would be. Be thankful that God does not play by our rules.

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Tuesday, 20th week in ordinary time – 18th August 2026 – Matthew 19:23-30

Although today’s Gospel appears to start a new narrative, it actually forms a single, cohesive literary unit with the previous passage.  Don’t divide the text. Today’s Gospel is the direct continuation of the rich man’s story.

Right at the center of Matthew 19 is a man trapped in a performance mindset, asking what I call, the ultimate transactional question: “What good thing must I DO to get eternal life?” He wants to DO SOMETHING to enter into eternal life. He sought the one exclusive ‘good work’ that would give him eternal life. But Jesus doesn’t play our performance games. He bypasses the man’s religious resume and hits him exactly where his identity was anchored, saying, “Sell it all, give it away, and follow me.”  

At the time of Jesus, culture taught this young man that his ‘bank account’ was proof of his anointing. If you were Jewish and you had wealth, everybody assumed you had God’s favour. They were standing on Proverbs 10:22, believing that “the blessing of the Lord makes you rich and adds no sorrow to it.”

This young man is looking at his life thinking, “I’m keeping the commandments, and I’m stacking the blessings, I must be winning with God!” He thought his net worth was a reflection of his spiritual worth. But he didn’t realize that you can have the appearance of a blessing and still be completely bankrupt on the inside!

So, what’s the real issue here? The problem wasn’t his desire for salvation; it was his obsession with obtaining it. He didn’t want a gift; he wanted a transaction! He wanted to treat the Almighty like a vending machine where you put in a good deed and pull-out eternal life. That’s exactly why he asks Jesus, “What must I DO?” He was stuck in a mindset where you try to earn what can only be received. He wanted to write the check for his own salvation so he could stay in control!

For Jesus, the commandments had a vertical and horizontal dimension of love. It was not so much in the doing rather than in the being, that salvation could be obtained. Salvation is not obtained by performing a unique or special deed, nor is it a ‘claim’ made by virtue of religious appropriation. Salvation is a free gift! Here in lies the mistake of this rich young man.

The Pharisees were sitting there so smug, thinking their DNA was their passport to heaven. They thought just being born a Jew or keeping a religious checklist was enough to buy their salvation. They were so busy ‘doing church’ that they forgot how to ‘be the church’! They were performing the rules but completely missing the relationship.

To expose this absolute foolishness, Jesus drops the truth on them by using a wild, unforgettable, culture-shock exaggeration. He takes a common idiom of the day and blows it up to show just how impossible it is to hustle your way into heaven on human effort. He basically says, “You think you’re big enough to earn this? Let me show you how small your human effort really is.”

The Persians also had a similar exaggeration when they spoke of an ‘elephant passing through the eye of the needle.’ The people at the time of Jesus simply picked a more familiar animal to compliment this oriental exaggeration.

The point that Jesus makes by using an exaggeration of a camel passing through the eye of the needle is simply this; it is foolish to believe that one can DO something to win salvation, for salvation is a free gift of God. The rich young man wanted to do something to gain eternal life, a proposition juxtaposed with greater possibility of a camel entering into the eye of a needle.

Understand now the confusion and perplexity of the question posed by the disciples who ask Jesus, ‘who then will be saved’? If a rich man whose wealth was believed to be an indication of God’s blessing is not assured of salvation, then who will? What then are the criteria for salvation?

Jesus challenged their Jewish mind-set, along with that of the rich young man. They would have to accept the concept of salvation as taught by Jesus; you can’t earn salvation with your money or deeds; and while such a thought seemed ‘impossible for mortals, it was not so for God’ (verse 26).

For two centuries, scholars have tried to provide different explanations to this text. It has been proposed that there actually existed gate called ‘needle gate’. Others have suggested a rock face, narrow enough for only a human and not a camel to pass. The message derived from such thinking leads one to believe that the message of Christ is a call to a life unencumbered by earthly baggage, a letting go of riches. But that is not the case.

The question of the rich young man is clear, “what do I do to inherit eternal life.” The answer of Jesus is that it is not found in our doing but in being; for salvation cannot be bought and even our riches which were believed to be a blessing from God, are worthless. The impossibility of the situation, reflected by the disciple’s question, “who then will be saved?” is answered by Jesus. Hard as it may be for man to comprehend, God makes all things possible!

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Vigil of the Assumption

In our first reading (1 Chronicles 15-16), King David finally brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem with shouting, music, and joy. But to get to this happy day, David had to learn a painful lesson about how to handle the presence of God. In his first attempt, David tried to move the holy Ark on a common oxcart. It was modern and convenient, but it treated God’s presence with casual familiarity. When the oxen stumbled and a man named Uzzah reached out to touch the Ark, he died on the spot.

David realized his mistake. You cannot carry the uncontainable glory of God on a lazy cart of convenience. It requires consecrated human shoulders to bear the weight. Fast forward to the Gospel (Luke 11:27-28). A woman in the crowd shouts out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you!”

On the surface, it sounds like a beautiful compliment. But this woman is making the exact same mistake David made with the oxcart. She is looking only at the outer container. She is treating Mary like a passive, biological box that just happened to transport Jesus into the world. Jesus instantly corrects her focus. He says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!”

Jesus is not insulting His mother. He is unmasking her true greatness. He is saying, “Do not just look at her biology. My mother is the ultimate Ark because she chose to offer her life, her heart, and her ‘shoulders’ to carry God’s Word.” The old Ark was holy because it held the written law on stone; Mary is the true Ark because she heard God’s voice at the Annunciation and answered with a radical, obedient “Yes.”

This brings us to the heart of the Vigil of the Assumption. Why does God take Mary, body and soul, into heaven? It is because she was the ultimate tabernacle. God looked at the holy vessel that carried His Son and declared that the decay of the grave could not touch her flesh. The Assumption is God claiming His sacred property.

Look at the mirror today, because this feast isn’t just about Mary’s history; it is a prophetic preview of your destiny! By the power of your Baptism and the weight of the Holy Eucharist, you didn’t just visit the tabernacle, you became one! You are walking around right now carrying the uncontainable, real presence of Jesus Christ inside your actual flesh and blood.

But the warning of the oxcart and the teaching of Jesus are shouting the exact same thing to our generation: You cannot carry a holy God with a casual lifestyle! You cannot build a destiny on a cart of lazy convenience, trying to reduce the Creator of the universe to a one hour  Sunday routine.

God isn’t looking for passive admirers; He is looking for people who will take His Word, lock it into their hearts, and put it into action. Think about it like a high-end, fragile package delivered to your door. You don’t just leave it sitting out on the porch to get ruined by the weather, and you don’t carry it around carelessly with one finger while talking on the phone. You lift it with both hands, treat it with respect, and bring it safely inside.

That is exactly how we need to treat God’s presence in our daily lives. Stop staring at the bad weather, the struggles, and the trials standing right in front of your face. Start looking up at the heavenly temple opened above you. When you choose to hear God’s voice and actively carry His truth with both hands through obedience, you walk directly into Mary’s victory. The storms of life might howl around you, but when you are holding onto the Word, no enemy on earth can drop you out of His hands!

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Friday, 19th week in ordinary time – 14th August 2026 – Matthew 19:3-12

Jesus wraps up His teaching of the community discourse in Chapter 18. He now leaves Galilee and heads straight toward Judea. Our Lord does not succumb to the applause of his disciples. He refuses to play the celebrity game even as the crowds continue to swarm Him for a quick fix. Bypassing the religious noise, He rolls up His sleeves to heal them and deliver raw mercy on a strict deadline, fully aware that the shadow of the cross looms large with Jerusalem waiting at the end of this road. After all, true compassion doesn’t consult a calendar.

Having already set in motion the plan to kill Jesus, the Pharisees are now stacking up evidence to use against Him. The Pharisees aren’t just asking questions; they are building a weapon, stacking up evidence because they are terrified of the popularity of this itinerant rabbi. They didn’t show up to have a theological debate or test His knowledge, they showed up to test His authority and drive a wedge right down the middle of His ministry to scatter the disciples.  

So what’s so deadly about this contentious question?  This question wasn’t just a theological debate; it was a weaponized trap carefully designed to force Jesus into a public relations minefield. By asking if a man could legally divorce his wife for any cause, the Pharisees threw Him into a vicious catch-22 that had already split the Jewish community right down the middle. They weren’t looking for a divine revelation; they were looking for a dividing line.

At the heart of this issue were two rabbinic schools of thought. The school of Hillel held that divorce could be granted for some rather frivolous reasons. A man could divorce his wife over bad cooking or because the wife left her head uncovered, or to say nothing of the ‘must happen’, the inevitable; a fight with the in-laws. All these and more could be grounds for a divorce. On the other hand, the school of Shammai, held that divorce could be granted only in the case of moral impurity such as adultery.

We have no idea which school of thought was behind the question posed to Jesus but we can be sure of this: He understood the implications of even appearing to take any particular side. Jesus was not here to take sides but to go back to the truth.

When the Pharisees stepped up with their traps, Jesus didn’t just dodge the question; He completely flipped the script to expose the hypocrisy hidden beneath their robes. He looked right at these highly educated, deeply religious experts and dropped a truth bomb that cut straight through their pride: If anybody on this planet should have known the answer, it was them—but they had been flipping through the pages of scripture so fast trying to find a rule to enforce that they completely missed the Revelation standing right in front of them. You see, you can memorize the text and still miss the Truth, because information without intimacy always leads to hypocrisy!

Jesus takes the discussion to where it all began; the Garden of Eden. He takes a step back in time, even before the matter found reference in Deuteronomy 24.  For Jesus, the bigger picture begins with what God ordained. Marriage is His idea, not ours and so we have no business to alter, delete, subtract or alienate.

Interestingly, Jesus is doing some serious course corrections. While the issue in question seems to be divorce, the real issue lies with the understanding of marriage. That is why Our Lord re-visits the first human marriage.  

 Stop trying to build a covenant on a cliché! We have completely romanticized marriage in our culture, painting a picture that looks great on Instagram but collapses in the living room because families keep pushing people into a lifelong commitment just to check off a social expectation. Marriage is not easy, and we have to stop treating it like it is the only destination for a fulfilled life because God has not called everyone to the exact same path. If you enter a covenant based on a fantasy, you will abandon it the second you face a reality check.

That is exactly why the Church doesn’t let you stand at the altar and read some poetically written, fairy-tale vows that you found on Pinterest; she forces you to look truth in the eye and say words that actually matter. The traditional vows don’t hide the scars of real life; they lean right into the friction, forcing a couple to acknowledge that there will be bad times, dark seasons, and worst-case scenarios. Because true biblical love isn’t a feeling you stumble into when things are good, it is a daily, intentional choice you lock into when everything else falls apart!

Marriage is not a tool to fix ‘broken people.’ So often we hear people say, “Get him(her) married and the problem will be solved, he(she) will become responsible.”  Marriage is a sacred covenant, not a rehabilitation clinic. As a holy sacrament, it requires deep reverence and spiritual commitment, not the expectation that a spouse will fix your broken pieces.

Parents who insist that their children marry in Church even when their child has professed himself or herself to be a non-believer or a lapsed catholic, do a great disservice to the sacrament. In our desire not to be embarrassed before our relatives and to ‘look good’ to the world we cause grievous harm to the sanctity of the sacrament.

The same must be said of mixed marriages in Church. While the Church, with conditions, permits the ‘nuptials’ to be held in Church, it should not be done primarily to please the parents or society. It is God we ought to please, for it is with Him as a witness, that we pledge love and fidelity. Sadly, most Catholics who enter into ‘disparity of cult’ marriages (Catholic with a Hindu/Muslim/Jew etc) are not even aware that such a marriage, even though held in Church, is not a sacrament but merely a ‘nuptial rite.’

As a pastor I have seen more than my share of Catholics who marry a person of another faith in the Church, merely to please mummy and daddy, with mummy and daddy insisting on the ‘mass’ being celebrated while there is a perfectly valid nuptial rite that can be held; reading, homily et al but without the eucharistic prayer. But sadly, mummy and daddy want to be made happy or want catholic society to be happy – not God.

Finally, to married couples – Marriage needs to be approached with the purpose that God had in mind; mutual love and procreation. When couples speak of not having children or ‘postponing’ conception, they violate the very reason for marriage. This is not some personal choice that you make. If you choose to freely be married in the presence of almighty God and his Church, then you do it, keeping his idea of marriage in mind and not change the goalpost along the way to suit your comforts and personal beliefs. Contraception is a grave moral sin and that cannot be changed because you find it a hard pill to swallow while conveniently swallowing other pills.

It would be better not to be married in Church if one has already intended to disregard the purpose of marriage as ordained by God.

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