What is your opinion?
Today’s Gospel reading from Matthew Chapter 21, speaks not only about a call for the community of believers to remain faithful in responding and in doing the Father’s will but beyond that provides a package of teaching which touches on Christian ethics, particularly the involvement of one’s conscience within the context of a sound decision making.
Sep 29, 2023
Reflecting on our Sunday Readings with Bro Gabriel Puvan Pillai
26th Sunday of
Ordinary Time (A)
Readings: Ezekiel 18:25-28;
Philippians 2:1-11 or 2:1-5;
Gospel: Matthew 21:28-32
Today’s Gospel reading from Matthew Chapter 21, speaks not only about a call for the community of believers to remain faithful in responding and in doing the Father’s will but beyond that provides a package of teaching which touches on Christian ethics, particularly the involvement of one’s conscience within the context of a sound decision making.
We all have our fair share of struggle with decision making and as I ponder more over this, it took me back to some 25 years down memory lane. I was in primary school then at SK Taman Universiti Indah, Seri Kembangan. Not very far from our school, a man whom we called Uncle Moorthy, used to have a humble makeshift stall just by the roadside where he sold mouth-watering homemade cendol and rojak.
On Fridays, when school finished earlier than the other days, my dad used to make a pit stop right at that stall after fetching me from school, to grab a few packets of chilled cendol and rojak before heading home, and it is there I had my first known difficulty with decision making. I had a hard time deciding whether to have the green coloured rice flour jelly in my cendol or not. That was because of its worm-like shape and texture. I just couldn’t afford to spoil my bowl of sweet and rich palm sugar syrup in the cold thick coconut milk. However, over time, I learned to have it as one usually does. Now let’s cut to the chase before I entice you further with a bowl of cendol.
As we know, this parable of the two sons was addressed directly to the chief priests and the elders following their rebellious confrontation towards Jesus’ authority and the validity of John’s baptism. Jesus’ presentation on the parable gives us a juxtaposition in the persons of the two sons. This helps us to further understand our own position within the context of our faith. The elder son of the vineyard owner agreed to his father that he would go and do his father’s business but in the end he didn’t. Clearly, this very act reveals the mask he was wearing in front of his father, and this speaks volumes about his character as well. He just wanted to be in the good books of his father for whatever reason known to him alone.
On the other hand, the younger one seems to be a rough unpolished chap who initially replied with a bold ‘No’. However, later the paradigm shift comes into the picture in verse 29 with these words “but afterwards thought better of it and went”. This tells us something about our own struggle with decision making in our daily life, be it an important or a trivial one. Christian ethics helps us to journey through and finally dive into a sound decision making process with the assistance of some given faculties like conscience. At the very basics, conscience is understood as the divine Voice of God which leads us to our moral awareness. To explain it further, this conscience expands further into two branches: Must conscience and Ought conscience. The must conscience is built upon mere compliance, a state where one has no, or lack of, freedom to choose. This will produce many encumbrances and henceforth one would start to fall. Conversely, the ought conscience is constructed upon a solid conviction, and this sheds light in the understanding of one’s moral obligations within any life setting (Sitz im Leben).
Taking this into account, I could think of a simple 3D formula which can help us all with sound decision making, Desire, Discernment and Decision. Principally, we start with the desire to know and do an act. The ancient philosopher Aristotle at the beginning of his magnum opus, metaphysics, states “all men by nature desire to know”. Hence, we can say that this desire is the first nudge where we receive the awareness of the call to act. With the help of this awareness, we move to the next, the discernment process where we reflect on our moral obligations that come as a package with that call. We see this in the second son who refused but later agreed to do it after having had a better thought of it, which is a form of discernment itself. This process will finally help us to respond to the situation and so to produce the right decision accordingly and as Jesus said in Mt 7:20, people will know us through the fruits we produce.
Having said all the above, the paramount objectives of Christianity are the Glory of God and Our Salvation, and we reach these by walking our talk and not just by being caught up with inconsequential talks which will turn us into nothing but hypocrites.
For our further reflection, we shall ask ourselves, “Am I walking my talk, what is my opinion?”
(Bro Gabriel Puvan Pillai is doing his Second Year Theology at St Peter’s College Major Seminary, Kuching)
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