September 27 th, 2026 (26 Sunday Ordinary A)

Dear brothers and sisters, the readings of today speak about conversion. God is always calling us to conversion which is to come back to him. To convert is to abandon sin and to allow oneself to be totally recreated by God. For this reason Jesus Christ has come. To give you and I the possibility to return to God. Christ has the power to take away from us our selfishness and our desire to always fulfill our own will and projections and to give us a totally new spirit like his. With Christ we can accept the will and plan of God and can abandon our life and our projections. The tragedy for us, like in the Gospel, is to ignore this call to conversion that is offered to us. There is a “Kairos”, a favorable time, in which Christ is passing for us. Christ passes today in front of us offering us the grace to change our life and to break with sin but we have the capacity to reject him. We can reject this call, we can ignore the voice and the word of God calling us back to the truth. This would be to waist the grace of God and make it vain. This is what happens to the chief priests and and the elders they totally reject the word of Jesus Christ. They do not believe him and harden their hearts in front of him believing that their life is ok. They do not see their own selfishness and sin. They think that their plans and projections are good.  They are convinced in their blindness that they are very good people. If we find ourselves also in this predicament the grace of God cannot work in us just like the chief priests and elders we nullify it. We cannot convert. We do not want to convert because we reject the help God is offering to us. This is why Christ says: “tax collectors and prostitutes are surpassing you in the kingdom of heaven.”  This is the paradox. The tax collector and the prostitute see their sin are not blind to it and take advantage of the grace and the opportune moment, the Kairos. They see and experience the tragedy of their situation and desire to come out of it. If today we recognize this Kairos and accept the grace of Jesus Christ in our poverty, God also can transform our life. If we do not our life and our sin will remain the same.

Peace, Fr. Nicholas, Pastor