Sunday’s Readings: Ezekiel 18:25-28; Psalms 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Philippians 2:1-11 OR 2:1-5; Matthew 21:28-32
…from your Pastor’s Desk
Here is a question I am often asked: Why do bad things happen to good people?
There are clues. First, how many people do you know who are completely good or completely bad? A childlike, over-simplified belief says that good friends are always good. Adults, on the other hand, know how mixed the human reality is. Each of us has a jumble of “good plants and weeds” within us. That is what today’s Gospel is about.
A father asks the first son to go work in the fields and the son says “I will not.” That’s bad. But in fact, he actually does go out and work. That’s good. So, today we know him as the good son, though he did not seem so at first.
As for that second son, [the bad one?] some even say he becomes the famous ‘Prodigal Son’.
But that, is another story.
The lesson for today? God the Father loves everyone, saints and sinners alike. And in order for any of us to love like God does, we must prepare to love in spite of the drawbacks in their personality, the hurts we receive, not just good things only. This can be terrifying!
The great example of a good man suffering is Jesus on the cross. The Second Reading puts it this way:
Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death.
Though God’s son was perfectly blameless, he took upon himself the mixed nature of human beings. He showed once and for all the mysterious reason why good people suffer, as he suffered.
Let God make you good.
Father Ron
