Repentance
Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent A-1
Entrance Antiphon Cf. Zec 14:5, 7 Behold, the Lord will come, and all his holy ones with him; and on that day there will be a great light.
Collect O God, who through your Only Begotten Son have made us a new creation, look kindly, we pray, on the handiwork of your mercy, and at your Son’s coming cleanse us from every stain of the old way of life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Scripture today: Zephaniah 3:1-2, 9-13; Ps 34:2-3, 6-7, 17-19 and 23; Matthew 21:28-32
What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work today in the vineyard.' 'I will not,' he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, 'I will, sir,' but he did not go. Which of the two did what his father wanted? The first, they answered. Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. (Matthew 21:28-32)
Repentance A wife of a fine man and mother of several children is discovered to have life-threatening cancer. It is cancer of the bowel and it has crept upon her without a single obvious symptom. It never occurred to her or to anyone in the family to take the recommended tests. The whole family is alarmed as they prepare for the worst. She quickly deteriorates and the doctors take extraordinary action. A campaign of prayer is mounted and — wonder! — the surgeons arrest the condition and an improvement begins. The woman’s life is saved and all rejoice. Another is not so fortunate. A father of a family is suddenly discovered to have advanced melanoma and nothing avails. The cancer goes to the brain and all is lost. He dies leaving his beloved wife and children. However, there is this about his tragic death, that he died in the Lord. Spiritually his death was a triumph, for in his surrender he offered to God all that he had, his family, his prospects, his own will and all his preferences. He accepted the divine will and, with the last Sacraments, went out borne by the angels. In both cases the darkness turned to light. But there is a deeper scenario and it is one that our Lord openly refers to in today’s Gospel passage. There are, again, two parties and both are in the darkness. In one case the darkness turns to light, and in the other the darkness deepens and becomes inexorable. The two parties are, on the one hand the sinners — the tax collectors and the prostitutes — and on the other the chief priests and the elders who had come to challenge his authority. Both were in, we might say, darkness. The tax collectors and the prostitutes had their trail of sin and the hostile leaders had theirs too, though they blindly thought their trail was one of righteousness. The difference between the two groups was that the first, the tax collectors, repented, while the second, the leaders — it seems — did not. The first were like the woman who came through her cancer to health, or like the man who passed through death into the arms of God. They went from darkness to light. The second group, the leaders, remained in their darkness.
Our Lord’s words remind us of the tremendous hazard that is inherent in deliberate sin. Sin is intrinsically evil. It involves the choice of what is evil and as such is an offence against the all-holy God who sustains us in existence and observes every aspect of our action even during our sinning. Horrible the thought! But so it is. Now, there is this. Where is the guarantee that we shall repent of our sins? We shall have stepped into the dark, with no light in hand. At the moment of sinning — and it is deliberate if it has been sin — how can we know that we shall repent? We have no intention of this in the precise moment of our sinning. If we proudly refuse to forgive, where is the guarantee that we shall repent of this? If we do not repent, God will continue to be offended. If it is a serious offence, then our relationship with him will have been cut asunder, laying us low in a spiritual death. Where is the guarantee that we shall be raised up, for repentance is necessary? If our course of sinning continues unabated, and if it takes the path of serious sin — such as the rejection of Christ and his message — then there is the danger that we shall die in our sins. All will be lost. The tax collectors and the prostitutes to whom our Lord refers had sinned and sinned repeatedly, but they accepted the grace of repentance and acted upon it. They passed from their darkness into the light. The chief priests and elders to whom our Lord was speaking display no intention of repenting. The more frequently Christ reduced them to silence, the greater their stubborn hostility grew. They continued in their deliberate sin, and their darkness deepened. Their spiritual descent is a lesson to us that the one thing we must do in life is to repent, and to repent repeatedly. If we sin, whether lightly or gravely, we must repent and without delay. Our Lord holds up the recognized sinners of his day as an example of the repentance that must be at the heart of fallen man’s life. He must repent and do so continually. Repentance is the door to light.
In our Lord’s parable, “a man had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went” (Matthew 21:28‑32). He repented. Our Lord concludes his strictures on the leaders with these words, “For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.” The ultimate tragedy of life is not so much that a man sins — which while being a tragedy is not the ultimate tragedy. The ultimate tragedy occurs when he fails to repent. So repent, then!
(E.J.Tyler)
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