26th Sunday A
Saints Lorenzo Ruiz and Pedro Calungsod // Filipino Festival
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
September 27 2026
Introduction
The Lord who made us knows us inside out. He understands human nature. He knows ‘what makes us tick.’ Not only did God create us in his image, but he also sent his Son to become one of us, to share our humanity. God’s eternal Son became “like us in all things but sin”.
Today’s Gospel shows us just how deeply the Lord understands us. In a brilliant parable, Jesus exposes the gap between saying and doing. He tells the story of a father who asked his sons to work with him in his vineyard. One of his sons frowned and refused flat out to help his father. But then he thought it over, changed his mind, put on his work clothes, and showed up in the vineyard with his pruning hook. The other son smiled at his father, readily agreed to help, and then didn’t show up – he went off and did what he wanted. Jesus asks: “Which one of these sons did his father’s will?” Even the scribes and pharisees got the right answer: it wasn’t the son who paid his father lip service but the son who ultimately did what his father had asked of him.
Which of these sons do we resemble? Are we like the first son, almost reflexively saying “no” to God, but then, thinking it over, and however reluctantly, saying, “Thy will be done!” Or, are we like the second son – genial in our relationship with God, still praying, still telling God that love him, but resisting that change of heart that will prompt us to do God’s will? The heart of the first son appeared hard but then he had a change of heart. The heart of the second son seemed soft and malleable but was in fact hard. Where is our heart located on this map the Lord has drawn for us?
Inconsistency
If we apply this parable to our lives, we might discover how inconsistent we are. Sometimes, grumbling at what is asked of us and doing it anyway, and sometimes resolving to do God’s will but then not following through. We are like that. One moment we are like the first son. At another, like the second. But what if our resistance to God’s will isn’t temporary but habitual? What if our familiarity with God in prayer masks our resistance to a much-needed change of heart, to a much-needed change of direction in our lives? That is what we need to beware of!
In Second Corinthians, St. Paul says: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed among you was not ‘yes’ and ‘no’, but in him it was always ‘yes’ (2 Cor 1:19). If we are true followers of Christ, our life with be a consistent and authentic “yes” to God. In our second reading his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul celebrates how God’s Eternal Son said “yes” to his heavenly Father: first by becoming one of us; then, by becoming a servant of us all; and finally, by laying down his life to redeem us of our sins. Because Jesus said “yes” to his Father in heaven, we are saved.
And that is why we cling to Jesus – begging for the grace to say “yes” to God every day. No matter how difficult the day. No matter how vexing the people around us. No matter how unpleasant the task at hand may be, or how radically God is asking us to leave our comfort zone. Saying “yes” to God is the source of joy and peace. In his will is our peace. That is why we need to participate in the Eucharist every Sunday. That is why we need to examine our consciences thoroughly. That is why we need to go to Confession frequently. We need to test the sincerity and staying power of our “yes” to God, and we need to anchor our “yes” to God in Jesus’ obedience to the Father.
Saints Who Said ‘Yes’ to God
But we also need the example and prayers of the saints to help us. And aren’t we blessed by the prayers and example of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz and Saint Pedro Colungsod? They show us how to say “yes” to God in extreme situations, and they pray that we will have the grace and courage to assent to God’s will, in our daily routine and in life’s more demanding moments.
St. Lorenzo had a loving wife, a beautiful family, and a steady job. But when he was falsely implicated in a murder, he accepted the invitation of some Dominican friars to become a missionary in Japan. He went to a land where he & his companions would die a slow & painful death because they refused to betray their Catholic faith. God tested Lorenzo’s assent to his will through misfortune, then challenged him to go on a dangerous missionary journey, and finally to lay down his life as a martyr for the faith. St. Lorenzo is a shining example of what it means to say “yes” to God.
Even as a teenager, Pedro Calungsod heard God’s call. He was chosen by Spanish priests to go on a missionary journey to what are now known as the Marianas Islands, eventually reaching Guam. There, he and his fellow missionaries endured great hardships and dangers, but they pressed on, preaching the faith, baptizing infants and adults. Through it all, Pedro remained kind and courageous. Ultimately, his witness to the faith cost him his life. He too said “yes” to God, not just with words but with his flesh and blood.
Let us ask these two great martyrs to pray with us and for us – that in our daily lives, we will find in Jesus the strength and courage to make our lives a consistent and authentic “yes” to God the Father, so that, having shared in the sufferings of Christ we might also share in his exaltation, he who lives and reigns with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.