Homily – 27th Sunday – Cycle A – Fr Jeremiah Browne (National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies #South Africa, Botswana, eSwatini).
A wealthy businessman was once asked to give a testimony at a church meeting about how his faith had influenced his life. He shared how, as a young man, on the day he earned his first dollar, he went to hear a missionary speak about his work.
At the end of the meeting, the missionary explained that everything collected that night would help support his mission.
The young man wanted to contribute, but he had only one dollar to his name. Suddenly, he was faced with the difficult choice of giving everything he had, or giving nothing at all. He decided to give the dollar.
Looking back many years later, now a very wealthy man, he said that he believed his success had been God’s blessing on that decision.
As he returned to his seat, an elderly lady seated behind him leaned over and whispered, “I dare you to do it again!” Now, there’s a challenge!
Perhaps, without realising it, the elderly woman was asking a much deeper question: Had that first act of trust become the beginning of a life shaped by faith, or was he simply telling a story about who he used to be?
It’s easy to look back at moments when we responded generously to God – a sacrifice we once made, a moment when we helped someone in need, a time when our faith was particularly strong.
The truth, however, is that our relationship with God cannot simply be a collection of stories about who we once were.
Faith always brings us back to the present. It asks, not simply, “What did God once mean to me?” but “What does my relationship with God ask of me today?”
That question takes us to the heart of today’s Gospel (Matthew 21:33–43). Jesus is speaking to people who know God. They know the Scriptures, they worship and pray, and they consider themselves faithful, but somehow, they had lost their way.
Jesus challenges them to recognise that simply claiming to belong to God is not enough. The real question is whether their relationship with God is shaping the way they live and the choices they make.
To make his point, Jesus tells a parable about a landowner who plants a vineyard and entrusts it to tenants.
Clearly, this parable is about more than a vineyard. Jesus is telling the story of God’s relationship with his people, who had lost their way. Again and again, God sent the prophets to call his people back to him. Often they were ignored or rejected. Yet God didn’t give up. Finally, he sent his Son, Jesus.
In telling this parable, Jesus is making the point that he is the Son whom the Father has sent. Like the son in the parable, he too will be rejected and put to death. Yet even that rejection will not be the end of God’s desire to draw his people back to himself.
This is where the Gospel begins to speak to us. We too have been entrusted with something precious: the gift of faith, a relationship with God, and an invitation to share in his Kingdom. What we have received is not simply a gift to enjoy – it is a gift that is meant to bear fruit.
If I say that God matters to me, then somewhere that relationship should be visible. It should be visible in my desire to do God’s will, in the way I treat people, in the choices I make, in the way I use what has been entrusted to me, in my willingness to forgive, to serve, to notice someone in need, and sometimes to put someone else’s needs before my own.
None of us gets this right all the time, and that’s okay. At the same time, God reminds us that we cannot live on the fruit our faith produced in the past. Faith is something we are called to live here and now.
Perhaps that’s why the elderly woman’s words are worth pondering. “I dare you to do it again.”
She wasn’t simply challenging that wealthy man to give away another dollar, or a million. She was asking whether the faith that had once shaped his life was still shaping it.
Maybe that’s the question that this Gospel leaves us with too. Is my relationship with Jesus shaping the way I live today?
Not yesterday. Not ten or twenty years ago. Today. And if not, what is he asking of me now?
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Please consider praying a decade of the rosary on a daily basis for the evangelising Mission of the Church and the Pope’s intentions.
The Pope’s intention for the month of October is for mental health ministry.
Let us pray that the mental health ministry be established throughout the Church, helping to overcome the stigma and discrimination of persons with mental illnesses.
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Blessed Pauline Jaricot, Pray for us. 🙏🏼🙏🏼
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Batswana Catholics Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Catholic Diocese of Mthatha Diocese of Francistown Catholic Diocese Of Kroonstad Catholic Diocese of Kimberley Youth & Young Adults Ministry Pontifical Mission Societies of the Archdiocese of Durban Catholic Institute of Education Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Catholic Diocese of Port Elizabeth DIOCESE OF CAPE TOWN #faith #hope #love #catholic #homily #mission