Homily for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sept. 27, 2026 Gospel of St. Matthew 21:28-32. Theme: A Changed Mind, A Changed Heart, a Changed Life
The Parable of the Two Sons is a story about the importance of “repentance” which in the Bible literally means to “turn around” and take a new direction in life. This was the central theme of the message that Jesus preached as He traveled throughout the Holy Land. The gospels all tell us that from the beginning of His public ministry, He went around the villages and towns saying, “The Kingdom of God has arrived! Repent and turn away from your sins so that you can enter into it!”
Our Lord spoke the Parable of the Two Sons to the chief priests and elders of Israel because He wanted them to see the error of their ways. You see, they were confident that they would gain entrance into the Kingdom of God simply because they did everything the law of Moses told them to do. They worshipped on the Lord’s Day and observed all the rituals of Judaism. They gave money for the relief of the poor and fasted on the appointed days. And that all sounds pretty good, right? And it is, that is, if it comes from a humble heart as an expression of one’s love for and devotion to God. And that's where Jesus was telling the leaders that they were missing the mark. Like the second son in the parable who said the right thing for his father to hear, they were more concerned about looking good and sounding good rather than actually being good from the inside out. Even when they witnessed the astounding miracles of Jesus with their own eyes, their religious pride prevented most of them from repenting of their ways. They remained unmoved, untouched, unchanged.
And so Christ, who knew their hearts, wasted no time in calling their bluff. And in doing so He shockingly held up before them the example of the tax collectors and prostitutes, two groups that they looked down upon as repugnant and repulsive to God. Jesus even went so far as to tell them that these outcasts whom they wrote off as "spiritual losers", so to speak, would enter the Kingdom of Heaven ahead of them. How so? Because they were honest about their moral status and owned up to their wrongs. They didn't try to excuse and justify themselves as the leaders did. And upon hearing St. John the Baptist preaching and calling people to conversion, they were touched deeply inside. They responded to the grace of God and experienced a change of mind that led to a change of heart that showed itself in a change of behavior. By their repentance they turned their original “no” into a “yes” and became like the first son in the parable who ended up doing his Father’s will.
You know, as an aside, I find it very interesting that of all four Gospels only Matthew’s includes this Parable of the Two Sons. Why do you think that is? Well, to answer that we need to recall what Matthew’s profession was before he met Jesus. He wasn’t a fisherman like most of the other Apostles. Do you remember what he was? Yup. He was one of those dirty and despised tax collectors who hung around with the prostitutes. He was one of those outcasts who responded to the call to repentance and so for Matthew this parable was extremely personal. He was a living example of what Jesus was talking about and so I bet that’s why he alone among all the Gospel-writers has passed on to us this story in which tax collectors and prostitutes are the shining stars.
Anyhow, through today’s Gospel Jesus is calling each one of us to personally identify where we are and where we stand in our relationship with God and in our practice of religion. Are we like the Jewish leaders who didn’t recognize that they needed conversion of heart and who assumed that they would be granted entrance into the Kingdom simply because they fulfilled their religious duties? Or are we more in line with the repentant tax collectors and prostitutes who owned up to their condition and made the effort to turn away from their sins in order to inherit the Kingdom of God? That’s something that only each one of us can answer honestly for ourselves.
In telling this story Jesus is saying that it’s never too late for any of us to change. And He’s assuring us that God always honors and blesses true repentance no matter when it happens in a person’s life. We aren't locked into our past nor defined and held bound by our previous sins because Christ isn’t interested in what we once were. He focuses on what we are now seeking to become. And the first step in taking a new direction in our lives is to see and admit our own spiritual and moral poverty, just like the tax collectors and prostitutes. We need to come before the Lord in humility of heart as they did, asking for the grace of repentance for we all have things that we need to turn away from. And our own experience of repeated failures to successfully change shows us that we cannot do this on our own power.
You know, there’s a saying that goes, “the saints are just sinners who never gave up” and so each day we need to keep on asking and we need to keep on trying and never ever give up. We can find the encouragement to do so by remembering that Jesus said that He came to earth precisely to befriend and bestow mercy upon sinners and not to congratulate the self-righteous. And when we fail and fall as we surely will, we have to always remember that what Jesus looks at is the intent of our hearts more than the success of our actions, for He knows very well that we are weak and wounded people. That’s why he gave us the Sacrament of Reconciliation for spiritual healing and the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist for spiritual power. It’s important to know that the Church teaches that Holy Communion is not a reward or a gold star for good behavior. Rather, it’s strength for the spiritually weak, medicine for the morally sick, and healing balm for us who are wounded by sin.
Every single morning when we open our eyes to a brand new day, the Lord is giving us yet another opportunity to repent and convert, to readjust our minds, to reorient our hearts and to deepen our resolve to live in a life-changing relationship with God. Today’s Parable of the Two Sons assures us that there’s abundant hope for each one of us in this regard, just as there was for Matthew and for the other tax collectors and prostitutes, whom everyone wrote off as being beyond saving. Everyone, that is, except the Lord Jesus Christ. May He be praised forever, Amen!
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