Mt.21:28-32
One of the most successful and rewarding actors in Hollywood is Mr. Tom Cruise. We could say that he is an essential element in Hollywood without a second thought. His style of acting and painstaking efforts for the perfection of his performance is highly commendable. Mr. Cruise was on headlines of several newspapers in 2012 because of his broken marital relationship with his wife Katie Holmes. This piece of news became a sensational one because of the reason that led them to divorce. Both of them were official members of a new age religion movement. Anyhow, Katie could not follow the teachings of this new age movement any longer and she did not want to raise her daughter Suri in this ideology. Once the settlement was over, she came back to the Church and continues to practice her faith.
What about Cruise? It is an amazement to know about the past life of this well-known actor. He had a catholic upbringing. He had joined in the Franciscan order to become a priest before his acting career. He was passionate about his goal. Sadly, he discontinued from the seminary and chose acting as his profession. Today, he is a known advocate of this new age religious movement and no more in communion with the Church. I presented the short sketch of these celebrities neither to point out their mistake nor to judge them. They have the freedom to choose their Way of life and God respects everyone’s freedom. At times, we can make the wrong choices. However, once we realize that we made a wrong choice and failed in our fidelity to the Lord, we should make the best effort to fall back to God.
Our failures can be blessings as much as it helps us to be humble and to understand our brethren who failed like us. When we analyze the lives of the great heroes of the Bible, we see this feature in them that once they all made a wrong choice then repented and fell back to God. The stories of Moses, Kind David, Zacchaeus, Mathew the tax collector, woman caught in adultery, etc. are the few examples of those belonging to the above-mentioned category. They all became powerful and effective instruments of God’s love.
The gospel passage of the day presents to us the parable of the Father and His two sons. When the father asked the first son to go to the vineyard though he responded with a negative answer after a while he repented and obeyed his father whereas the other son gave a positive response yet he did not fulfill his father’s wish. Jesus shared this parable in the context of his community wherein we see two categories of people the first category includes tax collectors and prostitutes. They were labeled as sinners in society. Yet their heart was longing for a saviour who could liberate them from the clutches of sin and renew their life. These were the people whom Jesus equated with the first son, who repented and fulfilled the father’s will. They accepted their vulnerabilities. They had the self-awareness that they were sinners need God’s mercy. Most of the prominent followers of Jesus belonged to this category that was considered as sinners by the society. This was the mission of Jesus: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Matt.9:13) And he says: “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Lk.15:7)
Whereas, the other category included all the religious elite of the time Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, etc. They created an outlook that they had fulfilled the every minute details of the Jewish law. In the heart of the heart, they were hypocrites. They were far from the heart of God. Their self-righteous mentality caused them to find fault with everyone else and consciously neglected their failures and justified all their loopholes of the law. Jesus very well called them whitewashed tombs because they were filled with malice.
Today’s gospel passage teaches us that all of us are need daily conversion. When we recognize our wrong choices, we need to undertake the journey of conversion and inner transformation. It would help us to be in communion with God and our fellow brethren. Our choice to follow Jesus is a challenging one. Our choice can go wrong. We may fail to listen to the loving words of our Abba Father. How far we are, the moment we allow ourselves to be open to the rhythm of grace, we will be graced to get back to the vineyard of our heavenly Father. As we continue our lie journey, let us develop this deep sensitivity to our Abba Father we may grow in our communion with Him by attentively listening to His words and always making that single choice – Jesus, who is the Way, The Truth, and the Life…