Today’s readings: Ezekiel 18, 25-28; Philippians 2, 1-11; Matt. 21, 28-32.
Thomas Merton’s spiritual legacy offers an excellent diagnosis of the inner tension in personal development between one’s true and false self. This same diagnosis lends itself perfectly to help us understand in depth what Ezekiel and the gospel today tell us about the inner tensions we all carry inside. In life, the ambition to be fully realised people and the goal of excavating our true selves fearlessly should be the driving forces that make us move on and truly grow up.
Jesus in the gospel parable speaks of two brothers both with their respective weaknesses. Yet, while one persisted in living alienated from the truth about his inner self, the other retracted and could in time come to terms with connecting with his true self. Beyond these two characters, Jesus was pointing to the two categories of people he constantly met on his journey.
People well seasoned in religion persistently fail to understand what faith is all about. They believe themselves to be at the centre, yet can be very far away. Then there are others, believing themselves to be outsiders, who though are more open to tune in with God’s calling.
The gospel demonstrates that believing means ultimately being capable of repentance, of conversion, of turning one’s back on the past. This is also the central theme of Ezekiel’s reading. Believing is a daily and continuous endeavour; it is in no way a point of arrival or an oasis of perfection. Believing means taking up one’s responsibility for what one does or does not do. Believing is also being accountable.
The short parable seeks also primarily to answer the question ‘What makes belief?’ Jesus condemns the attitude of those who consider themselves righteous and guardians of the truth without being able to discern that theirs is actually bad faith. It is ultimately coherence that makes good faith. It is not on doctrine that we are going to be judged.
What we find in today’s gospel is by any measure probably the harshest judgment Jesus passes on the official representatives of religion of his time. Saying that “tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you” is very offensive. We need to see what they imply even today in our context where we still experience these same tensions in the Church.
There is a major problem surfacing today whenever we face the much-needed reform of the Church. Too much has accumulated throughout the centuries and we find it hard to prioritise, to discern in truth between what is essential and what is not, what pertains to the core of our faith and what instead is accessorial. As long as belief is defined from the perspective of right doctrine, of orthodoxy, we may continue to miss the point.
As St Paul writes to the Philippians, the criterion is Christ, a person, not doctrine. The measure of what constitutes the core of the Christian faith is Christ, whom God raised high and in whom God’s glory was made manifest because he emptied himself. This was what the chief priests and elders of the people at the time of Jesus, so concerned with right doctrine, failed to perceive.
This was what on the contrary those on the periphery of the religious institutions perceived in Jesus, synchronising with him instantly and tuning in with his message of healing and salvation that triggered in them all repentance. As today, even at that time there were those who refused him and those who believed in him. Believing for the latter meant being healed and liberated to be authentically human.
The official guardians of religion saw no need for change, and their ‘good’ faith ended up being ‘bad’ faith sustained by hard-headedness. Fear of change is tantamount to resisting Jesus, who by nature is always destabilising. Many a time we can very easily think that we are defending God’s doctrine while in reality we are simply being protective of our own interests.
Jesus envisages tax collectors and prostitutes as being first precisely because in his presence they were the least defensive and hence free enough to perceive their real self.