Dear Brothers and Sisters,

When I was young, I remember thinking of this stretch of the liturgical year, the long march of Ordinary Time from the end of the Easter season to Advent, as a long and tedious time.
Perhaps I just couldn’t wait for Christmas to come! However, this stretch of Ordinary Time is not “ordinary” at all. It’s a time for us to be challenged once again by the teachings of Jesus and to remember that, as His disciples, we are always called to keep growing. It’s kind of helpful that the color of Ordinary Time is green. Green means grow!

During Ordinary Time, we typically work our way through a Gospel Sunday after Sunday. In Year A, it’s the Gospel of Matthew. It’s always interesting to see the themes that connect the different Sunday readings. Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard Jesus remind us that being His disciple is a free gift, but it also requires a response from us.

Think back to the parable of the two sons who gave their father different answers about whether they would go out into the vineyard. Then we heard about the landowner whose tenants refused to give him his share of the harvest. This weekend, we hear about the king who invited people to his son’s wedding banquet. In each of these parables, we see the same invitation: to recognize the gift we’ve been given and choose how we will respond.
The sons didn’t earn their sonship. The tenants didn’t earn the use of the vineyard. The wedding guests didn’t earn their invitation to the wedding of the king’s son. In the same way, none of us has earned our invitation to be a disciple of Jesus. That has been and will always be His free gift to us.

However, the sons still had to choose whether to go out into the vineyard. The tenants had to choose how to treat the landowner and what he had entrusted to them. The wedding guests had to choose whether to accept the invitation. Every day, we face a choice with consequences greater than we might realize: am I going to say yes to Jesus today, or am I going to follow my own path?

When we follow our own path apart from Jesus, it leads to death and destruction, no matter how convinced we are that it will bring us happiness. When we follow Jesus and respond to the grace He has given us, we begin to realize just how valuable it is to belong to Him and to share in the promise of His resurrection.
Today, let’s once again recommit ourselves as Jesus’ disciples, recognizing that we have
received a free gift that we are called to respond to every day. Let’s say yes!

Peace, Father Steven Caraher