Monthly Archives: September 2026

Reflecting on Matthew 20: 1–16

Oh, boy. It’s that irksome parable again. Those poor workers who show up at dawn, and work in the heat all day, end up getting the same pay as the guys who showed up at the last minute. I can feel their outrage even today.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. Isaiah’s words never hit so close to home as they do when we hear this gospel today, because that is NOT the way any of us would have handled that situation.

I’ve mentioned before that I can’t stop watching baby videos on you tube. These babies are SO adorable (and I suspect most of them are actually AI), but everything changes when the new baby comes. That’s when the videos turn dark, because they show the intense jealousy the older child can feel towards the new baby. Not all, of course. There are heartwarming videos of toddlers hugging and kissing the new baby, but there are others that show the deep betrayal some toddlers feel when they realize mommy loves the new baby, too.

WH Auden wrote:

For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have:
Not universal love,
But to be loved alone.
As Abel was a threat to Cain, so it has ever been.

We don’t want to hear that our parents love us equally. We want to be taken aside and assured that the truth is we are loved more than all the others. But God’s gracious love brings  us all into the Beatific Embrace, even those who call to God at the very last minute.

Have you ever been jealous of the gifts God has given to someone else?

Reflecting on Matthew 18: 21–35

Forgiveness. Can you imagine? This servant owed the king a “great amount,” so much so that it would require selling him, his wife, their children, and all their possessions in order to repay the debt. Imagine the countries of the world forgiving our staggering national debt. That’s the kind of mercy the king showed this debtor, who fell to his knees to beg for their lives.

But how can it be that the same debtor then went to find a servant who owed him a much lesser debt, and threw him in prison until he could repay him?

The king hears about this heartless act and, enraged, gives him over to torturers, who will torment him until his debt is paid. (Hmm…how does torture repay a debt?) But the parable we hear this weekend may be less about the retribution of God than it is about a state of soul so hardened that even a kind and compassionate God could not soften it.

The forgiven servant must have had a rock-hard heart, that he could be rescued from the very brink of catastrophe and not extend that grace to his own debtors.

There’s a popular phrase, whose origin is from of old: Memento Mori  (remember that you must die.) So central is this admonition among hermetical communities like the Trappists and Benedictines that some seventeenth-century Capuchin communities decorated their chapels and cells with skeletons. One monastery placed this sign next to them: You are now what I once was, and what I am today you will one day be.

Remember your last days, set enmity aside (Sir. 28:6). Forgive everyone (including me, please). Do not go to God with anything standing in the way.

Is there anyone you still can’t quite forgive?

Reflecting on Matthew 18: 15–20

Here’s a hint about getting the inside story of a gospel text. When Jesus speaks about a particular problem (in this case the issue of confronting someone who has hurt you) you can bet that exact issue is coming up among his disciples, or the communities they founded.

I think the demographic that most understands this process is Religious communities. They are an extraordinary counterculture in many ways, but imagine living in community with someone who drives you crazy, and whose membership in your community was something over which you may have had no control.

Any kind of community life is the great testing ground of faith. Think of the family in which you grew up. I think of my own kind parents, who tried and tried to get their kids to do better as human beings. Their words are my guideposts today, although, of course, I gave them no attention then.

One of the most insightful things I‘ve ever heard occurred in a small group in the Catholic Biblical School. We were talking about today’s gospel. The student said, “I think that’s why young people crave tv sitcoms like “Friends,” where the siblings, roommates, colleagues in the workplace speak directly to the person who’s bothering them. That doesn’t happen in real life. If one of my adult kids says a harsh word to their sibling, the sibling just writes them off forever. No fighting. No conversation at all. They’ve just been cancelled.”

St. Teresa of Avila thought that relationships in community (your family, your workplace, your home) were often a greater indication of one’s relationship to God than the heights of mystical prayer. And the first teacher, of course, is the family.

Have you been able to take constructive criticism from a friend?