27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Hi, this is Father Nick Smith, pastor of St. Patrick's in Perry.

We celebrate today the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

We're coming down to the end of the church year.

And so our Gospels will start to focus more on the Last Judgment as we come to the conclusion of Matthew's Gospel.

Today, Jesus is clearly preaching about the fact that the Jewish people, the Israelites, over the whole course of the Old Testament, rejected the witness of the prophets.

These are the servants in the parable of the landowner.

The landowner sends the servants, God sends the prophets to Israel to remind them to turn back to the Lord, to give him the proper produce at the right time.

Finally, after Israel was a rebellious nation for many, many years, God sends his own son.

And even his son, the people of Israel reject and put on a cross.

This is meant to be a sign to Jesus' hearers, the chief priests and the elders of the people, which of course they will go on to reject and Jesus will go on to suffer and die for the redemption of the world.

This is also a reminder to us that only those who believe in the Lord Jesus and obey his word in all things will ultimately be saved.

And so it's a call to us to continually purify our obedience to the Lord.

Maybe we've compromised or hedged our bet a little bit in our Christian life.

We've grown slack or lax in certain areas, maybe our prayer life or our life of charity in different ways.

So let us then take stock of this and ask the grace of the Holy Spirit to continue to be faithful to our Lord, to continue to submit to Him in faithful obedience, in humility, knowing that we have a good Father in heaven who wants to look out for His children.

He has sent us His Son.

After many times of being a rebellious people, a rebellious nation, he does not give up on us, but he sends us his greatest treasure in order to reconcile us with him, his only son.

Let's not lose this opportunity, but embrace him with our whole hearts so that we may receive the fruits of his redemption.