16 December 2025 – Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
Zechariah 3:1-2, 9-13; Matthew 21:28-32
H O M I L Y
For God, human beings are not divided into two categories: the good and the bad. For Him, all are His children; all are sinners, on a journey, always capable of falling again, but also always called to a new conversion, and therefore capable of a new conversion.
In the society in which Jesus lived, ‘sinners’ were not simply people who had committed some serious offence. They constituted a social class. In fact, they were outcasts. Anyone who, for one reason or another, had deviated from the law and customs of the middle class (which consisted of educated and virtuous people, the scribes and Pharisees) was treated as someone of a lower class. Sinners therefore belonged to a well-defined social class, the same one to which the poor in the broad sense of the word also belonged.
This class included all those who had immoral or impure professions: prostitutes, tax collectors (in the pay of the Roman authorities) and usurers. It also included those who did not pay tithes to the priests and anyone who was negligent in observing the Sabbath and the rules of ritual purity. The laws and customs in this area were so complex that uneducated people were unable to understand what was expected of them. The ignorant were inevitably lawless and immoral, and were considered sinners by the Pharisees.
This class included all those who had immoral or impure professions: prostitutes, tax collectors (in the pay of the Roman authorities) and usurers. It also included those who did not pay tithes to the priests and anyone who was negligent in observing the Sabbath and the rules of ritual purity. The laws and customs in this area were so complex that uneducated people were unable to understand what was expected of them. The ignorant were inevitably lawless and immoral, and were considered sinners by the Pharisees.
Moreover, it was virtually impossible to escape from such a situation. Theoretically, a prostitute could be purified, but only through a very elaborate process of penance, purification and atonement. However, this cost a great deal of money and, obviously, she could not use the money she earned from her profession for this purpose... Similarly, tax collectors were required to return everything they had taken, plus a fifth, to all the people they had defrauded. Uneducated people had to go through a long process of instruction before they could be considered ‘purified’. In practical terms, being a sinner was the fate of certain people. Some were considered to be condemned to this inferior status by fate or by God. In this sense, sinners were prisoners. They were denied any form of responsibility in a society that was very concerned with class.
What does Jesus do? He mingles with sinners and, in doing so, restores their respectability. He makes an effort to socialise with tax collectors and prostitutes. He eats with them. And as soon as they show the slightest sincere openness of heart, he tells them that their sins are forgiven. The Greek word for ‘forgive’ means ‘to release,’ ‘to let go,’ ‘to set free.’ To forgive someone is to free them from the domination of their past life. When God forgives, he ignores the past of the person he forgives and removes the present and future consequences of past transgressions.
Jesus' gestures of friendship towards these people clearly showed what was in his mind and heart. He ignored their past. He regarded them as people who no longer owed anything to God and therefore no longer deserved to be rejected or punished. They were forgiven.
Not only through the words of today's Gospel, but also through his general attitude, Jesus proclaims that anyone who says ‘no’ to God can, with His grace, transform that “no” into a "yes ‘; and that the person saying “yes” at the moment — or thinking of doing so — should not boast about it, for that ’yes" is all the more fragile when one is proud.
Armand Veilleux