+REGARDING OTHERS AS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OURSELVES 26TH Sun. 2023
Our reading this morning from St Paul’s letter to the Philippians is a summary of the whole of the New Testament. We are to have the same attitude among ourselves as was in Christ Jesus. Jesus did not regard his equality with God as something to be grasped or clung to but he emptied himself taking the form of a slave.
This very week we have the beginning of the Synod in Rome where Church leaders from all over the world will gather. They are to carefully listen to one another so as to be attentive to what the Holy Spirit is saying to our Church of today. How important it is that they put on the mind of Christ so as to reveal through their gathering what is most life-giving for all in search of truth and love.
They will seek to be true to Paul’s words, to “do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regarding others as more important than” themselves. Let us pray that this Synod may fully realize its potential for guiding Christians everywhere into the divine life that has been given us by our baptism. The Holy Spirit is active in the lives of Christians everywhere but it is only in being attentive to one another’s gifts and needs that the Church will realize its full potential.
Our gospel, it seems to me, is especially appropriate for this time for it too takes us right to the heart of the Christian way of life. We are all being asked to work in God’s vineyard so that the harvest may be plentiful, revealing God’s graciousness. Whether we see the vineyard as our society, the Church, our community or family, we are being called, each one of us, to be living witnesses of God’s abundant gifts. To do so we must be careful not to seek our own interests but those of others.
In some ways it is normal to be like the one son in our gospel, who tells his father I will not go, because he has his own interests, the things he likes to do. But then, thinking twice of his father’s request, dares to love and went to work in the vineyard. And it is all too easy for any of us to be like the other son who right away tell his father he would go to work but then his own interests prevailed and he never showed up.
To have the mind of Christ as Paul told the Philippians, is to be like him who humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And because of this, God has greatly exalted him and bestowed on him a name that is above every name. It is to share in Christ’s own victory over the ego-self, over death and to allow him to be Lord of the whole of our lives.
At the heart of every the Mass, of every Eucharist celebrated at this altar, is the wonder of God’s great love, a love that does “not regard equality with God something to be grasped” but empties and humbles himself or herself, “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” To allow this love to rule our lives is to share, even already here and now, in the glory of our risen Lord.
Ezek 18:25-28; Phil 2:1-11; Matt 21:28-32