26 October 2024 - Saturday of the 29th week (even years)
Homily
In our day there are so many accidents and disasters like those mentioned in the first part of this Gospel that I do not think anyone is inclined to think that the victims of these events are sinners whom God wanted to punish. We are perhaps more inclined to say, when something bad or serious happens to us, “What have I done to God to make this happen to me?” This is obviously an erroneous way of imagining God, for whom evil is not something to be explained, but to be eliminated. Thus, when a blind man was presented to him and asked whether he was born blind because of his own sins or those of his parents, Jesus refused to answer the question and simply healed the blind man.
The second part of the Gospel text we have just read shows us another aspect of God's attitude towards evil or at least towards the absence of good. God is patient - much more so than we are. In our efforts to acquire this or that virtue that we lack - patience, for example - we easily conclude after a few failures that we will not succeed and we throw in the towel. Of course, the same is true of others. After we have seen them manifest this or that aspect of their character for a while, we can no longer conceive of them as anything else, and we fail to see the barely perceptible but real progress they are making.
This is all the more serious because God has intended that our own growth should depend to a large extent not only on His confidence in us and our confidence in ourselves, but also on the confidence that others have in us. He has given us all the power to bind and loose. When we say of a person, "this is the way they are and they will never change", we bind them, we freeze them in the present moment and forbid them to grow. When, despite negative appearances, we believe that each person is different and fundamentally better than all their actions, we unbind them and allow them to grow, not only in our own eyes, but in theirs and in God's.
When we become discouraged about our ability to improve in this or that area, or about the inability of our brothers and sisters to do so, let us give ourselves - and them - another year, like the vinedresser in our Gospel!
Armand VEILLEUX