26th Sunday Ordinary Time - October 1st, 2023 (Click Here for Readings)

Just change your ways, said Ezekiel in essence to the Jews.  Their belief that “The Lord’s way is not fair,” was based on false thinking that their punishments were due to the sins of their ancestors rather than their own. In the Lord's words, they were being called to convert from their habits of iniquity and wickedness to virtuousness and righteousness; from bad habits to good.

As with the Jews in Ezekiel’s time, God ways are always fair to us as well, giving us chance after chance to convert our sinful habits to good ones. We have no basis to blame our parents’ or ancestors’ sinful behaviors for ours, must depart from their affairs and take personal responsibility for ours. If the adage “like father like son” applies to our lives in negative ways, it’s on us to fix it, and better sooner than later to prevent those ways from further embedding themselves in us.

Though our upbringing may have been in a positive faith-filled environment with our belief that there’s not much to fix, it’s not our free pass into heaven. As Jesus warned the chief priests and elders in today’s Gospel that “tax collectors and prostitutes are going to heaven before you,” we as well may one day find drug addicts, rip-off artists and numerous others whom we despise in front of the line to heaven ahead of us.

Unlike the second son in the Gospel, let us join the tax collectors and prostitutes in being better doers of God's word and never be recognized as “all talk and no do.” By “doing yes” like the first son and following St. Paul’s advice to the Philippians by “doing nothing out of selfishness or vainglory, humbly regarding others as more important than ourselves, and having the same attitude as Christ Jesus,” our place in heaven's line becomes more assured.   

Jesus could have clung to his superiority but didn’t, and we also must avoid clinging to the gifts we have that make us feel more special than others who will often have gifts that far exceed ours.

Let us humbly serve one another in love and with an attitude of equality, taking the form of a slave, emptying ourselves and striving for more unity in our communities. 

At the end of every day for a few minutes, let us review ourselves, discern what we’ve done right and wrong and strive to be the best we can be going forward. Never be a gerbil on a treadmill. Get off of it and pray for continual conversion from bad habits to good.

God has special tasks for each of us individually that he's given us special talent for. When he calls, answer him YES with action and not merely with words.

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