26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, September 27, 2026

Watch this homily here! (begins at 38:10)

 
       Authority! The word doesn’t always conjure up the warmest, most positive of thoughts and feelings, does it? I think it’s true to say that we can’t live without it but that we sometimes have a hard time living with it! At its best, authority is strengthening, unifying, enlightening, transformative; at its worst, it is autocratic and repressive. Authority is a good word, authoritarian is not.

        Authority played a significant role in Jesus’ life and ministry – from his birth which took place when Mary and Joseph were responding to the demands of a distant bureaucracy, to his death at the hands of the occupying Roman authorities. Authority was an ever-present reality for Jesus. The gospels paint a picture of him dutifully rendering unto Caesar what belonged to Caesar but who, while respecting the anointed authorities of the Jewish faith, was never afraid to confront and challenge them whenever he saw that they were blind, deaf, or rigid.
And that’s exactly what he does in the little parable he tells. Both sons in the parable do an about-face. The first one boldly refuses his father’s bidding to work in the vineyard but later thinks better of it and goes. The second son is all sweetness and light when his father sends him, but later has second thoughts and doesn’t go.

        Jesus asks the chief priests and elders which of the two sons did their father’s will. A no-brainer. “The first,” they reply. And then - shockingly – he tells them that prostitutes and tax collectors (the very dregs of society) – are the first son. Their initial response to God’s law was to reject it, but when John the Baptist came along preaching conversion of life and a baptism of repentance, they listened to him, opened their hearts and minds, and turned their lives around. How infuriated those religious authorities must have been to hear Jesus tell them that tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom of God before them!

       That little parable of Jesus echoed nicely what we heard in the first reading from the prophet Ezekiel. There, we had a ‘virtuous’ person who said all the right things but ended up doing all the wrong things; and we had a ‘wicked’ person, steeped in sin, who had an awakening and turned his life around, doing what was right and just. Virtue, it seems, can come in the most unexpected places. And in the most unexpected persons!

        Back to Jesus and to the way he dealt with authority. As always, Jesus points the way. Duly constituted authority deserves our respect, of course, but not at the expense of one’s integrity. Jesus never compromised his integrity and neither can we. That’s true in our personal lives – in our families and our workplaces. It’s true, too, in the way we respond to Church authority, and it’s also true in the public domain where the respect we give our elected officials is important as long as it doesn’t compromise our convictions, values, and beliefs as Catholics. These come first, and we not only have a right, we have a duty to speak up and speak out as Jesus did!

       One way we do this is by exercising our right as citizens to vote, which we will get to do very soon in the November mid-terms. In a democracy, voting is not just a right, it’s an obligation - one we should take very seriously and exercise only after carefully studying the issues and painstakingly forming our consciences.

      And when it comes to forming our consciences, the Church – not the politicians, not the pundits or partisan commentators, not the media or the candidates – the Church is the best guide we have. Catholic Social Teaching - the Church’s rich body of teaching on social and moral issues, steers clear of partisan politics. Instead, drawing its principles from the Scriptures – especially the gospels – and from Church teaching down through the ages – the Church always puts front and center the human person, the God-given dignity of the human person, each and every human person, without exception. And the Church strongly advocates for the Common Good (not just one’s own selfish or personal good). It advocates, too, for those who have no voice – which makes the Church a voice for life – life in the womb and life all the way to natural death, and the life, too of the poor and of marginalized people, including migrants and refugees whom we remember in a special way today which is the World Day for Migrants and Refugees. And lastly, the Church is a strong and often outspoken voice when it comes to care for the earth, our common home. The Church actively promotes care for the earth, and it works tirelessly for a world that is more just and more peaceful, “a disarmed world,” to quote Pope Leo.

       My friends, when we cast our vote, these are the things that should inform our consciences and guide our choices. Not just one or another of them, but every one of them. Aren’t we blessed to have teaching, authoritative teaching we can trust!. And we don’t have far to go to find it!

Father Michael G. Ryan