The scholars of the Jewish Law at the time of Jesus continued to argue among themselves as to which is the greatest of the 613 commandments of God that they identified in the Jewish writings.

In today’s Gospel we have Jesus being challenged again by some of the Jewish leaders (Pharisees and Herodians are mentioned specifically) who would like to catch him in error or put him in a difficult situation so that people would not listen to and trust him.

The Gospel of this Sunday focuses on the allegory of the owner of the vineyard and his dealings with the tenants, or its other way around, how the tenants treat the vineyard and the owner’s servants. 

For this Sunday’s reflection upon the Readings for Mass, I would like to make the following suggestion for you in your own time and space.

One day, I was reading my Facebook page as I always do at certain times of the day and I saw this beautiful quote, “God doesn’t say NO to our prayers. God has three answers - either he says, YES; AT A LATER TIME; or I HAVE A BETTER IDEA.

The consoling words of Jesus, to his disciples on a troubled boat in the middle of a rough sea, are the theme of today’s Liturgy. Jesus gives courage and assurance to his disciples, who were battling the heavy wind and tide on the Sea of Galilee.

Whenever I have the chance, I watch a movie every now and then. Sometimes there is something at the movies that catches my attention and if I have the time, I’ll go and watch it as my form of stress-reducing recreation.

One of the faithful religious nuns who was present on my farewell day from a mission experience I took part in during 2010 dropped a card into my hands which is for me an all-time inspiration: “Life is a journey consisting of different steps of staircases.

Whenever you get to one set of stairs, there will always be a platform leading to another. Don’t get discouraged on the way. Take every step as a challenge and move forward”. These words of encouragement and zeal kept me going even when the going got tough.

As last Sunday, there are three parables in today’s gospel. The third one reminds us of the teaching in the first parable of last week’s Gospel – that there will be good and bad in the Kingdom of God – and in the Church.

The Gospel text for this Sunday is a long one. It is taken from the section of Matthew’s Gospel that presents the “wisdom teaching” of Jesus. It contains three parables about the kingdom of heaven ...