26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A (2026)
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Ezekiel 18:25-28
Psalm 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 (6a)
Philippians 2:1-11
Matthew 21:28-32
September 27, 2026
We regularly face choices in our lives. The question is do we make good choices or bad choices.
What determines whether our choices are good or bad? Should it not be our Father’s Will?
Jesus tells a parable to the chief priests and the elders. A man has two sons. He tells both of them to go to work in his vineyard that day. They both make an immediate choice. The first says he will not work in the vineyard. He denies his father’s will. He later decides to do it.
The second son tells his father that he will do it but never does.
Our actions can speak louder than our words. Do your actions and/or words say “yes” to God’s Will or do they say “no”?
The chief priests and the elders claimed to do our Father’s Will yet they do not listen to Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God. They say “yes” in their words but live differently.
There were tax collectors who broke the 7th Commandment, “Thou shall not steal,” in the way they overtaxed the people for their own financial gain. There were prostitutes who broke the 6th Commandment, “Thou shall not commit adultery.” In stealing and committing adultery, they had said no to our Father’s Will. Their lives were changed when they encountered Jesus. They turned from sin, repented, and received forgiveness.
The chief priests and the elders did not allow themselves to encounter Jesus as the Son of God. And many did not later change their minds and believe.
Now, there were priests and elders who would come to accept Jesus. There were tax collectors and prostitutes who did not. We each have the same choice to make.
Do you believe in Jesus? Do you truly want to stop sinning? Do you seek God’s forgiveness and allow him to change you now?
Our Lord wants to save us. He manifests his almighty power in pardoning and showing mercy. Yet, in the days of Ezekiel, there were people who said, “The Lord’s way is not fair.”
They had been defeated by Babylon. Some thought they did not deserve this as they claimed to follow God’s Will. Blind to their own sins, they felt they were being punished for the sins of others.
We need to acknowledge our own sins. As repentant sinners, we do not seek fairness in our sins for it would be “fair” to punish us for our sins. What God offers us is forgiveness. For sinners, forgiveness is better than what is “fair.”
Our Lord speaks through Ezekiel of the virtuous man who “turns away from virtue” and sins. He had done good but there was evil in his heart that led him to sin. Sin is death in that it separates us from God.
Yet there is always hope for our Lord tells us that when we turn away from wickedness to him, He will forgive us and give us new life. In knowing this, we find “encouragement in Christ” and solace in his love. It is in seeing Jesus on the Cross that we find “compassion and mercy.”
When we repent of our sins, we ask the Lord to remember them not. We ask him to show us sinners the way of humility to follow him. We ask him to teach us His ways and His Truth.
Jesus shows us what it means to follow our Father when “He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Are you ready to live with the same obedience to our Father’s Will?
Peace,
Fr. Jeff