There Can Be No Mercy Without the Fullness of Truth

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea, 

Saints Peter & Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ Oct. 12, 2014

"In fact, there can be no mercy without the fullness of truth."

Fr John Paul Shea
at his ordination in 2013

In today’s Gospel passage for this 29^th Sunday in Ordinary time we are given another parable (Matt 22:1-14.) that is one of the most strangest and shocking parables in the Gospel of Matthew. In this parable, as with other parables, our Lord is seeking to grab our attention. He wants to wake us up to the reality of what He is trying to say.

Royal Wedding Feast:
Many are called. Few are chosen. 

We hear of a king who gives a wedding feast for his son and who sends out his servants to invite the people. Now, in the time of Jesus, there was no greater honor then for a king to invite one to the wedding of his son. So, we can recognize right away the importance of this invitation.

We then hear of the different excuses of those who are invited. Some simply refuse to come. Others ignore the invitation and go away, “one to his farm, another to his business.” And the rest who are invited lay hold of his servants, mistreat them and kill them.

Now, as we examine these words, we can first recognize that the king represents God while the wedding is the reign of God’s feast for His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. It will take place at the end of time. 

Those invited to the wedding feast were God’s chosen people, the Israelites. The servants, who issued the invitation,  represent all the prophets and teachers of Israel sent by God over the centuries to invite this people to the feast of eternal salvation.

The prophets and teachers are ignored, rejected, and even murdered. So, we can see that the people have consistently refused this invitation. The final rejection to this invitation is the rejection of Our Lord Jesus Himself who was murdered on a cross. The anger of the king represents God’s anger against those who hear His invitation to salvation but still refuse to accept it.

Not the proper dress
for a wedding

Once the invitation is rejected, the king  tells his servants to go out into the streets and invite everyone into the wedding feast, the good and the bad alike. This is each and every one of us. Yet, there is a punch line in this scene: we hear that there is a guest at the wedding who is not wearing the proper dress. So he is thrown out into the outside darkness where there is wailing and grinding of teeth.

My brothers and sisters, today’s parable is all about accepting God’s invitation to eternal salvation and our proper response is to strive to change our lives! God invites every person to receive His salvation. He began with the Jews and He has extended His salvation to every single person. Yet, we continue to either reject God’s invitation of salvation or we accept his invitation but do not wear the proper dress. In other words, we accept His invitation but do not strive to change our lives.

As Catholics, each one of us is invited to the wedding feast of God. This invitation is the Mass.  Yet, how many of us Catholics ignore this great gift! How often are we too busy for God! Or how often do we come to Mass without acknowledging the great gift of the Eucharist? 

On the other hand, how often do we Catholics accept God’s invitation yet want to come into our Church and dictate how we should dress. In other words, we accept God’s invitation, but we want to be Christian on our terms. Instead of entering God’s Church as an invited guest, we seek to come into God’s Church by our own expectations and our own rules?

This sort of thinking does not come from God. It comes from the world. We do not choose Christ. Christ chooses us! He invites us to live by His commandments. He calls us to conform our lives to Him so that we can have eternal life!

Heaven is like a wedding feast. And our Church is a foretaste of this wedding feast. The reason why our Lord has come into our world is so that we can be united to God. It is like a marriage. We become united to Him so that we can share in His divine life! 

Therefore, if we want to be part of this eternal banquet, which begins here on earth, we must first accept this invitation. And in accepting this invitation, we need to put on the proper clothes! We must take off our old self and put on the new self. We must strive to live a life without sin!  

We hear much today with the papacy of Pope Francis of the need for our church to be a more merciful Church. This is a good because we always need to be merciful.  Yet, we are reminded that the path of mercy is always the path of truth. In fact, there can be no mercy without the fullness of truth.

Many Christians today simply want mercy without truth. They want to be Christian without the cross. They want the comfortable life without the struggle. But we know from the life of our Lord Himself that this is not the Christian life! The Christian life is not an easy life. This is why there are so very few authentic Christians in our society today! This is why our Lord has said that our Church is the narrow gate. This is why our Lord says in today’s parable that many are invited but few are chosen!

As the king in today’s parable called his servants to go into the main streets and gather people into the marriage feast, we too are to go out into the streets and proclaim the message of salvation to the entire world. In fact, in his message at World Youth Day in Brazil, Pope Francis used this exact phrase. He said, “I want the Church to go out into the streets, I want us to defend ourselves against all worldliness…”  

My brothers and sisters, we must proclaim the message of salvation! Yet, we are to go out into the streets not to bring the world into our Church but to bring the sacredness of our Church out into the world. We need to let the world understand why our church teaches against the issues of today that are ruining our culture such as same sex marriage and cohabitation. We need to let the world know of God’s mercy for those who seek forgiveness! We need to let the world know the message of conversion! 

God has given us our Church to be the message of salvation! Therefore, our emphasis must be on holiness. The Church is not a club. It is not a social gathering. It is not about how many people we can bring inside.

No! The Church is about accepting the invitation of our Lord to eternal salvation and striving to live a life of holiness. We can either accept this invitation or we can reject it.

We can enter our Church with a desire to change our lives, or we can be thrown out into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. The choice is ours. May each one of us strive to accept God’s invitation for eternal salvation,  and may we each respond to this invitation by striving to change our lives.

Did your enjoy this post? Fr. John Paul Shea has another one from Oct. 5, 2014

PRODUCE THE FRUT OF ETERNAL LIFE! Know Your Catholic Faith

PRODUCE THE FRUIT OF ETERNAL LIFE! Know Your Catholic Faith

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea, 

Saints Peter & Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ  Oct. 5, 2014 

In today’s readings for this 27th Sunday (Isaiah 5:1-7; Matt 21: 33-43), we are reminded of the importance of spiritual responsibility.

In today’s first reading we hear from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah relates a story of a vine grower who has a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He spades it, clears it of stones, plants the choices vines, and builds a watchtower so that the vineyard can be protected. 

Yet, when harvest comes, all the vine grower gets is sour grapes.

Now the vineyard that is spoken of in today’s first reading is God’s chosen people, the Israelites. God had chosen this people to be the first fruits of His salvation. Yet, they continued to defy God’s laws. 

So what does God do? God takes the responsibility away from them. He allows the vineyard to be broken into and trampled so that it would become a place of ruin. In fact, this prophecy of Isaiah literally came true when the Israelites were invaded first by the Assyrians and later the Babylonians, who desecrated the land and deported the people.

Now, in today’s Gospel we hear of a similar story. In fact this parable is rooted in the image that we heard from today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah. In today’s Gospel, Our Lord also speaks of a vine grower who plants a vineyard, puts a hedge around it to protect it, digs a wine press in it, builds a tower and then leases it to tenants while He goes on a journey until harvest.

When vintage time draws near, he sends his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce and discovers that the harvest is not what it should be.

My brothers and sisters, today’s readings for this 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time calls us to be responsible with the gift of faith that has been handed down to us! God called the Israelites out of slavery and gave them the law and the commandments so that they would be a people set apart. He called them to bear the fruits of holiness. He told them not to intermingle with the other nations because they would be influenced by their iniquity and their worship of false gods. 

And when the Israelites strayed away from God, God sent the Israelites his messengers, the prophets, to guide them back to the right path. But they ignored the prophets. So God allowed the nation of  Israel to be destroyed.

Yet, in His mercy, God did not give up on His chosen people!  He sent them His Son. But they did not listen to Him! In fact, they killed Him by hanging Him on a cross!

My brothers and sisters, Our Lord Jesus is the last in a long line of prophets sent by God, and He is calling us to bear fruit of holiness. He is calling us to be faithful tenants of our Church.

Notice in today’s Gospel that our Lord is addressing the chief priests and the elders of the people who were the religious leaders of the time. So our Lord is saying to them specifically that it was their responsibility to hand down the teachings of the faith given to them through the prophets. 

Today, the Catholic Church depends on the magisterium for handing down the faith. But it is not simply the Church's hierarchy whom Our Lord calls to be responsible for protecting our faith! 

He is calling every one of us to protect the vineyard until our Lord comes again! We are each responsible to learn our faith, to know our faith, and to teach our faith.

Yet, we are also reminded that we do not own our faith. We don’t own the Church! We don’t own the world. We do not even own our own bodies! We don’t own anything! We are simply tenants. Everything we have in this world has been loaned to us  to care for. Everything we have is a gift from God!

We cannot be workers of the vineyard unless we first recognize that we are not in charge of the vineyard. God is in charge! We don’t make up the rules, because God has already given us the rules! He has done this through the prophets, the commandments, the Gospel, and through the laws of human nature!

The Father prunes those He loves 

We -- the living Body of Christ, the Church  --  are God’s vineyard -- to be set apart. We are not the world’s vineyard. Like the Israelites who were not to conform to the gods of the nations around them, we too, as members of the Church, are not to conform to the false god’s of our culture! 

This is why our Lord called the Church the narrow gate. For the gate to perdition is wide! In fact, what the devil plans is for our Church is to let the world's values in so that our Church, the vineyard of salvation, will be stripped of its sanctity and holiness.

This is why it is important that we pray hard for this upcoming synod on marriage and the family that it will bear much good fruit!

Finally, we may notice that although the message of today’s first reading and today’s Gospel passage are similar, there is a critical difference in the ending. In the passage from Isaiah when God is disappointed with the sour grapes, He destroys the vineyard. The hedge is taken away and given to grazing. The wall is broken through and trampled, and it is made a place of ruin. In the message from today’s Gospel, however, it is not simply the vineyard, but the tenants who are destroyed.

My brothers and sisters, our Lord is coming again, and holiness is the fruit that he expects from each one of us. We have been called to work in His vineyard for the salvation of souls. Let us be responsible tenants of the vineyard of our Lord until He comes again. For the kingdom of God will not be given to irresponsible tenants. It will be given to those who strive to produce the fruit of eternal life.

Did you enjoy this post? Fr. John Paul Shea has a new one  There Can Be No Mercy Without the Fullness of Truth

NEW RED SHIRT VIDEO: Developments in Speaking About Homosexuality

(Editor's note) The new wave of Catholic apologetics on the issue of same sex attraction will have to do with identity. That is, it will be possible to help people distinguish same sex attraction and same sex identity as two separate things. Then people will be free to choose an identity of personhood or relationship to God instead of concluding, "I'm gay" or "I'm straight." Such a chosen identity has consequences which can be negative. But many don't realize that even experiencing same sex attraction, they can choose to be a "person" or a "child of God."  Susan Fox

If you would like to explore this issue further, please read: 
The New Evangelists: Bringing Christ, A Light to All People Who Experience Same Sex Attraction

Also there are other videos on this blog from the Red Shirt: "GAY? The Catholic Church Loves You Too!! My Testimony
Three other Red Shirt videos are available at Jason Evert's  The Chastity Project under "Testimonies."