Homily for Saturday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time

Our Gospel passage today comes at a time when the Sadducees, Pharisees, and chief priests were at a point when they had had enough of Jesus and His message. They wanted to kill Him, but He had the ear and the support of the people. So, the leaders believed they couldn’t kill Him.

The questions they began posing were an attempt to get Him to blaspheme, giving them a reason to put Him to death. They were trying to get Him to mess things up for Himself. They had an agenda hidden within their questioning.

We, too, often have an agenda when we go to Jesus. Usually, it’s something we want, something we want to change, or something about our life or our faith that we don’t like. Sometimes, without meaning to, that agenda can go against Jesus’ message or even the nature of God.

In our prayer, we should ask God for help with things, for change, for answers, but that prayer needs to be offered with a genuinely open heart, mind, and soul, that our agenda may take a back seat or disappear completely, so that God’s agenda may be our agenda.