Today is the twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
This week’s Gospel is about God’s lavish love for us and how we sometimes feel like He does too much. After all, in human terms God’s actions sometimes can seem unfair. Why should we try to live an exemplary life and love God and our neighbor if God is ultimately going to reward even those who do the bare minimum? That’s thinking like man and not like God.
Our first reading comes from my favorite OT chapter in Scripture, Isaiah 55. In our reading today we hear that God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. I would say that’s stating the obvious.
I think one of the great challenges for us as Christians is to try to imitate God, including all three persons of the Holy Trinity, without thinking we are God. We should rejoice at every soul saved, regardless of whether or not they “deserve it”. I put that phrase in quotes because that’s how we think sometimes. That’s the point of the parable. It always brings out a response of “unfair” from many of us. That focus on unfairness shows our concern for ourselves and how we’re treated more than our concern for others. That’s not what we’re called to.
When I teach about God I always read from this section of Isaiah 55 and talk about how important it is for us to try to see as God sees and get over ourselves. Jesus tells us in Jn 13 that He has a new commandment for us, to love one another as He has loved us. It is in that loving that we can start to get over ourselves and be more Godlike.
I hope the next time you see how someone else has been blessed by God you’ll be genuinely happy for them and not focus so much on yourself.
As for me I try to remember that when I hear a beautiful singing voice. It seems to me to be the unfairest thing in the world that I can’t carry a tune while there are others with the singing voice of an angel. I try to remember that God gave me other gifts and my sense of unfairness is all about me when I should be happy for the person with the great voice.
There’s a lot of talk about AI right now, and rightfully so. I read a good article from Cardinal Cupich from Chicago a couple of days ago on this topic. You might want to read it: https://www.chicagocatholic.com/web/chicago-catholic/cardinal-blase-j.-cupich/-/article/2026/09/17/why-magnifica-humanitas-
You might also go back to my post from May here: https://thisandthatblog.org/2026/05/31/ai-and-human-dignity/
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
