Month: September 2026

The Bucket List

(Ezek.18:25-28; Phil.2:1-11; Mt.21:28-32)

Rob Reiner’s film The Bucket List (2007) tells the story of two terminally ill men – a tycoon played by Jack Nicholson, and a mechanic played by Morgan Freeman. [i]

They share a hospital room with only months left to live, and decide to write a list of all they want to see, do, and experience before they ‘kick the bucket.’ They then go skydiving, driving fast cars, and flying around the world.

It’s an entertaining film, but its basic message is profound: nothing focuses the mind quite like a deadline. When we realise that our time is short, our priorities soon change. The trivia we used to worry about fade, and the things we’ve avoided, like faith, family, and forgiveness, suddenly become urgent.

The spiritual reality, however, is that we all have a terminal diagnosis. It’s called our mortality, for no earthly life lasts forever. As St James reminds us, our life is ‘a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.’ (Jas.4:14)

Because life is so short, the choices we make today carry eternal weight. We cannot rely on past merits, and we cannot blame our forebears. This is the warning the prophet Ezekiel gives us in our first reading today.

The Israelites have been complaining that God is unfair, and God replies that it’s time for them to take responsibility, for things are getting urgent. He says that if good people turn away from virtue to commit sin, they will die in that state. But if a wicked person turns away from sin to do what’s right, he will surely live.

In other words, our spiritual life is not static; it’s a daily choice. But too many of us have become complacent, perhaps thinking, ‘I’ve been a good person for years; I can coast for a while.’ But such coasting is a trap. We cannot afford to delay our ongoing conversion, because we just don’t know when our final hour will be.

This message is reinforced in today’s Gospel, in Jesus’ Parable of the Two Sons. A father asks his two sons to go and work in his vineyard – not tomorrow, but today.

The second son says, ‘Yes,’ but doesn’t show up. Given that life is so short, his choice is tragic. He thinks he has plenty of time and treats his Father’s vineyard like a chore he can return to later.

How often do we do the same thing? How often do we procrastinate? How often do we say, ‘I’ll work on that relationship later,’ or ‘I’ll return to my faith when I have time?’

We too often act as though tomorrow is guaranteed, but the vineyard owner demands action today, because today is the only time we actually possess.

The first son initially refuses to work in his father’s vineyard, but then realises his mistake. He repents, and does the right thing. This is the kind of person Ezekiel praises. He has made mistakes and has wasted time, but as Ezekiel says, ‘he has renounced sin and become law-abiding and honest,’ so ‘he deserves to live.’

Jesus then shocks his listeners. He says that tax collectors and prostitutes will enter God’s kingdom before they do. Why will they? Because when they heard God’s call, they didn’t argue about it. They understood that life is short and moved quickly to clean up their lives.

In The Bucket List, the two men come to realise that staying in luxury resorts doesn’t bring them peace. True peace comes from reconciling with estranged family, and practising selfless love.

At the end, the dying mechanic asks two key questions: ‘Have you found joy in your life?’ and ‘Has your life brought joy to others?’ These are questions we all need to answer, because they get to the heart of things.

Jesus asks the same question: Have you entered God’s vineyard, and are you doing the Father’s will?

Very helpfully, Jesus has prepared a spiritual bucket list for you. Here it is: Repent while you can. Forgive while you can. Return to God while you can. And love while there is still time.

For the only life that will stand before God on Judgment Day is not the life we planned to live someday, but the life we choose to live today.

Let’s no longer live with the empty politeness of the second son. Let’s get real like his brother.

However often we might have said ‘no’ in the past, today we can still enter God’s vineyard. Today we can still say ‘yes,’ by turning to Jesus Christ.

And that yes, lived now, is the beginning of eternal life.

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[i] The Bucket List. Directed by Rob Reiner, performances by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2007.

Amadeus

(Is.55:6-9; Phil.1:20-24, 27; Mt.20:1-16)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one of classical music’s most remarkable composers. He was born in Salzburg, Austria, and starting from the age of only five, he composed over 600 masterworks in only thirty years.

When he was 25, he moved to Vienna, the home of another composer, an ambitious man named Antonio Salieri. Their relationship became turbulent and is the subject of Miloš Forman’s extraordinary movie, Amadeus, which won eight Academy Awards in 1985. [i]

This film depicts Salieri as a deeply religious and hard-working man who promises God that he will live a chaste, disciplined, and industrious life if God will make of him a great composer.

For years he works slavishly, climbing Vienna’s musical ladder. He’s convinced that his strict obedience has earnt God’s favour. But then Mozart arrives as someone vulgar, childish and arrogant; everything Salieri is not. Yet, at the piano, Mozart is simply a genius and Salieri is filled with jealous rage.

Salieri looks up at the crucifix on his wall and accuses God of being unfair. He cannot understand why a just God would pour such talent into a frivolous character like Mozart, while letting him wallow in mediocrity.

There’s similar resentment in today’s Gospel, in Jesus’ Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. Several workers are hired at dawn. They follow the rules and slave all day under the hot sun. But when evening comes, the landowner outrages them. He gives those who have worked for barely an hour the same wage: a full day’s pay.

The first-hired workers aren’t upset about being underpaid; they got what was promised. They are complaining because the latecomers are treated equally. They cannot accept the landowner’s generosity.

They are suffering from Salieri’s syndrome: spiritual envy.

How often do we fall into this same trap? How often do we resent newcomers getting the same rewards as those who have been doing the right thing for years?

Some people even get uncomfortable thinking about the saints who were once terrible sinners. But God’s kingdom isn’t based on merit. It’s founded on grace.

St Dismas, for example, was the Good Thief who was crucified next to Jesus. He had spent his life breaking the law, and yet at the last minute he turns to Jesus, asking to be remembered. But Jesus doesn’t say, ‘It’s too late.’ He rewards him by saying, ‘Today you’ll be with me in paradise.’ 

Dismas is the ultimate eleventh-hour worker in God’s vineyard. He wins heaven at the very last moment.

St Angela of Foligno was a wealthy Italian woman who spent her life indulging herself. Then, at the age of forty, she lost her family and had a vision of St Francis. She sold everything she had, gave it all to the poor and became a Franciscan and a great teacher of prayer.

She shows us how God can take a shallow heart and set it ablaze in an instant.

And then there’s St Mark Ji Tianxiang, the Chinese doctor who was an opium addict. His parish priest refused him the sacraments for thirty years because of his chronic addiction. But he never stopped going to Mass, praying, and begging God for mercy. Then in 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, he was arrested for being a Christian. He went to his execution singing hymns, and died a martyr’s death.

By the strict rules of the day, Mark was a failed Christian standing idle at the edge of God’s vineyard. Yet Jesus gave him the highest crown of heaven: sainthood.

In our society, we tend to take a transactional view of things: if I do this, then I expect to get that. Our laws reinforce this thinking, and many of us expect even God to comply. But as Isaiah says in our first reading, God’s ways are not our ways. God does not think like we do.

Human fairness demands that you get exactly what you earn. But divine mercy provides exactly what you need to be saved. The landowner in today’s parable gave the latecomers a full day’s pay because he knew their families needed it.

God acts out of our need, not our merit.

At the end of the movie Amadeus, Salieri is a broken old man being wheeled through an asylum. He calls himself the ‘patron saint of mediocrity’ and shouts, ‘I absolve you all!’ It’s a tragic, hollow mockery of the priesthood, reflecting a lifetime of keeping score and resenting God’s gifts.

Our challenge is to rise above such bitterness. When we see God pouring his blessings onto those who don’t seem to deserve them, we should rejoice rather than grumble. The truth is, none of us really deserves God’s mercy. We are all sinners.

So, let’s be grateful that God is so generous with his blessings. He gives his mercy to all who open their hearts to him.

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[i] Amadeus. Directed by Miloš Forman, performance by F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce, Orion Pictures, 1984.

The Holy Hanged Men

(Ecc.27:30-28:7; Rom.14:7-9; Mt.18:21-35)

In the 1800s, Turin was a tough and unforgiving place. As huge factories rose up during the industrial revolution, people came flooding in, looking for work. Most ended up in overcrowded slums, where food was short, crime and disease were rife, and children worked up to 14 hours a day.

A local priest, St John Bosco, famously responded by rescuing and educating abandoned children. He established the Salesian Order to help him, and by the time he died in 1888, 1400 Salesians were doing this work in Europe and South America.

The person who encouraged Don Bosco into this work was his seminary professor, St Joseph Cafasso. Few today have heard of him, but he prepared new priests for service among the poor.

Cafasso also did something else: he personally supported condemned men in Turin’s squalid prisons. He spent hours listening to their confessions, giving hope and dignity to miserable inmates before their execution. He stayed with them all night, accompanied them to the scaffold, and held a crucifix up high until their final breath. He called these executed men his ‘little saints.’

At the time, Jansenism was rife, with too many people thinking that God was severe and unforgiving. Cafasso, however, taught that God is a loving, compassionate father who never rejects anyone, even at the gallows. For no sinner is beyond God’s mercy.

Indeed, some of these prisoners died so reconciled to God that they came to be called his ‘holy hanged men.’

Today, we must ask ourselves: Do we really believe in God’s mercy? And do we accept that God’s grace can reach even the worst sinner?

Today’s readings assure us that God truly is merciful. But they also remind us to share that mercy with others.

In our first reading, the Jewish scholar Ben Sirach is blunt. Resentment and anger are foul things, he says, yet both can be found in the sinner. We like to think of ourselves as good people, but too often we remain resentful when others hurt us.

Let go, Sirach says. Forgive them, and when you pray your own sins will be forgiven. For how can you expect healing from God when you show no mercy towards others? So, remember the commandments, and be forgiving.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Peter asks Jesus how often we should forgive others. Seven times? Jesus replies, not seven, but seventy-seven times. In other words, always. We are obliged to forgive anyone who has offended us, and we must seek forgiveness from anyone we might have offended. 

Why? Because God is love, and we too must be loving if we want his divine life working inside us. We must let go of the past and learn to live in peace. 

Jesus then shares his parable of a servant who owes his king an enormous sum. He begs for patience, but the king does something even better: he forgives the entire debt. However, that servant then goes chasing someone else who owes him a smaller amount, and demands repayment.

He has received mercy, but does not pass it on. That is a tragedy.

St Joseph Cafasso spent his life with men who had committed terrible crimes. He understood the need for justice, but he also believed that even in the darkest places repentance can happen, Christ can enter and mercy can flow.

If such mercy can reach condemned men at the gallows, how then can I not forgive others in my own life?

Most of us have suffered family wounds, broken friendships, harsh words, tensions and betrayals that still fester inside us. We tend to hold on to them.

Yet the psalmist tells us, ‘Merciful and gracious is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.’ This is the mercy by which we should live. We all stand before God as debtors who have been shown the deepest compassion.

As St Paul says in our second reading, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. This is why St Joseph Cafasso’s ministry was so powerful. He stood by the gallows declaring that even the condemned belong to God. Even at the last moment it’s not too late to seek the loving grace of Jesus Christ.

This should give us all hope, because no-one is beyond repentance. No-one is beyond God’s grace.

But then we must share that mercy with others. We must forgive those who hurt us.

This does not mean pretending that evil did not happen. But it does mean refusing to let hatred rule our heart, and opening our hearts to God’s peace.

So, let’s pray this little prayer: Lord, do not let your mercy stop with me. Teach me to love and forgive, just as you do.

Three Faces

(Ezek.33:7-9; Rom.13:8-10; Mt.18:15-20)

The Japanese, I am told, have a saying: that we all have three faces. The first is the face we show the world. This is our respectable, public face, the one we carefully manage.

The second is for those closest to us: our family and friends. It’s the face we reveal when we are tired, frustrated, or unguarded.

And the third is the hidden face we sometimes hide even from ourselves. This is the truest picture of who we are, for it reflects our deepest heart where our wounds, sins, fears and desires are only fully known by God.

As Christians, our challenge is not to maintain our outward veneer, but to draw God’s grace into our hearts so that we might live lives of holy integrity – consistently presenting only one genuine face to the world.

St Francis de Sales can teach us something here. He is widely known as a meek and gentle saint, but that gentleness did not come easily to him. For years he wrestled with his fiery temper, but he managed to overcome it using several techniques he records in his spiritual classic, Introduction to the Devout Life.

One thing he learnt is to never let even the smallest annoyance enter his mind. Once it gets inside the door, he said, it acts like a tiny spark that can quickly burn the house down. At such moments, he tried distracting himself by focussing on a person’s good qualities, not their failings.

He also prayed solidly for God’s help because he knew he couldn’t do it alone. Some of his prayers were very short, including: ‘Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like yours.’

As he allowed God’s grace to transform the hidden parts of his heart, St Francis de Sales was drawn into a life of peace and love that came to be reflected in his face.

In today’s first reading, Ezekiel becomes a watchman for the house of Israel. What is a watchman? It’s someone who must speak up when danger arrives. If a watchman sees danger and says nothing, he shares responsibility for what follows.

The point here is that genuine love always takes responsibility, for real love is never passive. We cannot say we love someone, but refuse to get involved. True love does not hide behind an empty smile.

A fine example of this is St Monica. Outwardly, she was an ordinary mother, but she also had other faces which she kept private. This includes her constant worry, her tears, her years of prayer, and her refusal to give up on her son, Augustine.

She knew that love does not save others by force, but neither does it stand back and say, ‘It’s not my business.’ Her love was selfless and patient, and her faith in God was unwavering.

She, too, allowed God’s grace to transform the hidden parts of her heart, and St Monica is now recognised for who she became: a devoted mother with the holiest of hearts.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us what to do when something goes wrong in a relationship. ‘If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone,’ he says.

In other words, don’t write someone off as a lost cause; instead, speak to him. Try to win him back. Christian correction is about love, healing and reconciliation, not humiliation and punishment.

In our second reading, St Paul tells us that the key to all this is love. If we are serious about love, it will stop us from being too harsh or too cowardly towards others, for Christian love avoids both cruelty and indifference. It speaks the truth, but it does so in order to save.

This is where that Japanese saying becomes important. The Christian life is not about maintaining appearances; it’s about letting God’s grace reach our hidden face, the one only God can see. If God can heal our hearts, then our public and private faces will gradually become more truthful, integrated and holy, allowing us to reach out to others in meaningful love.

So, let me ask you: is the kindness you show in public real, or is it just a mask? When you avoid difficult conversations, is it because you are prudent, or because you’re afraid?

And when you come before God in prayer, do you present only your polished face, or do you reveal the real you?

The truth, of course, is that God already sees it all. Our third face is never hidden from him. But here we can take heart, because God does not see us in order to shame us. He sees us in order to heal us. He sees the real person so that his grace may reach into our deepest hearts.

But for this to happen, we must first turn to Jesus. Tell him you want your face to reflect holiness, integrity and love.

Ask him to transform the hidden parts of your heart.