Message Body
SUNDAY 26 Yr 1
YES AND NO
I would like to consider today’s Gospel as a commentary on life as a warfare; the warfare between good and evil; the warfare that’s going on in our hearts day in day out for the whole of our lives. When we are obeying God’s will in our lives we aresaying “Yes” and we are doing “Yes”. We are fighting the good fight. When we say “No” and do “No” then, of course we are losing the good fight. But Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that there are times when we say “Yes” and do “No”. Whenever that happens, he assures us, we are also losing the battle just as much as if we were saying “No” in the first place.
We can understand what Jesus is getting at if we consider what his words meant to the Jews who were listening to him and then apply it to ourselves. His listeners were proud to be called the people of God; the bearers of the ten- commandments; the keepers of the promises of revelation. If anyone knew God, it was they. If anyone knew what he wanted of us it was they. If anyone knew the greatness of the destiny he was calling mankind to, it was they. And they were perfectly entitled to have that exalted idea of themselves. God had in fact chosen them from out of all the nations on earth to be his special people. He had instructed them and guided them by the patriarchs and prophets to walk in his ways. In their belief in all these things they were the world’s “Yes” to God. But in their refusal to acknowledge Jesus as the fruit and flower, the climax of the revelation that they so prided themselves in, they were now only saying “Yes” and doing “Nothing”.
Now if we apply this to ourselves in our own attitude to this same Jesus; in how many ways do we not all say “Yes” and do “Nothing”? We have been given to know and accept the commandments of God; to say our “Yes” to them; but then we do “Nothing” by failing to keep them in the way we should. We have been privileged to say “Yes” to the kingdom of God as not being of this world, yet we live as though the things of this world were the only things that matter. Like the Jews of old once were, we are now the guardians of the fullness of revelation; and like the Jews of old we fail in so many ways to live up to it. Like the elder son in the parable we say “Yes” by our faith, but we do nothing by our deeds.
Above all we have been privileged to say “Yes” to the great mysteries of the Incarnation and the Eucharist. Let our “Yes” to these two ineffable gifts be the great “Work” we feel called to in our lives. “Noblesse oblige”.
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