Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A

Reflecting on Matthew 21:33-43

We Catholics have faced a lot of hostility through the years. “No Catholics Need Apply” is not just a sign on a store in a 19^th century tenement district, but an unspoken condescension on the part of a great number of people in our post-modern age.

Tell the clerk at the bank that you write a weekly scripture column for Catholic churches, for example, and get ready. God didn’t make the world in six twenty-four hour days.  It’s ridiculous that Catholics think they are the only ones going to heaven. Everyone knows that Catholics worship idols. And don’t forget that Catholics want to destroy the planet by clogging it up with unwanted children.

Sometimes you just want to stare at people and say, “Learn something. Read a book.”  Just for the record:

1. It was the Catholic scripture scholars who led the way in teaching the UNLITERAL way to read the Genesis account of the beginnings of the world.
2. Catholic teaching holds that God’s mercy exceeds our understanding.
3. Catholics worship Christ, and revere the saints whose witness brings us closer to him.
4. The many beautiful documents the Church has written on the environment are blunt and unwavering: it’s the voracious greed of the developed nations (read “us”) that is bringing the planet to the verge of destruction.

This overwhelming misinformation and disdain for the Church (not to mention the inestimable sins of the priestly sexual abuses) has worked to make us embarrassed, apologetic, and silent about where we go on Sundays. But the stone which the culture rejects is still the cornerstone of grace and hope for the world.

Are you embarrassed to reveal that you are Catholic?

Ordinary Time - Cycle A