We find Jesus in the Temple precincts, engaging the hierarchy of Israel. The issue at hand is the very authority by which Jesus acts, which he has linked to the authenticity of the preparatory mission of John the Baptist – regarding which the priests and elders are willing only to dissemble. In their evaluation of John, they fear the crowds; they substitute political expediency for truth as the criterion for their "discernment."

Jesus stands against the wielding of religion as a tool of the state, invested with a utility neutral to truth. With the Parable of the Two Sons, he shifts to a hypothetical scenario with anonymous characters, affording exactly one answer by natural deductive logic.

The one son regrets his defiance, while the other doles out empty promises, framed by the sycophancy of his address, Sir, absent from the dialogue of the first.

Jesus has come to purify religion of its tendency (exhibited across all times and cultures) towards manipulation, power, exclusion, and myth-building. Having already cleansed the Court of the Gentiles, Jesus vindicates the truly repentant, the tax collectors and prostitutes. In so doing, he exorcises the people of Israel of the mythical imputation of irredeemable guilt to her less favored children.

Jesus is come to dethrone the tyranny of mere accidents, appearances which undermine the true, the good, the holy: Jesus, for whom "Body has become word, and word has become body in the act of love that is the specifically divine mode of being," as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger once wrote; Jesus, the one Son in whom is accomplished the loving address of the Father, and the perfect carrying out of His will.

Let us consider with St. John of the Cross, today's saint, that in the evening – after our work in the vineyard – it is love alone on which we will be judged.

Val Tarantino

Reflection for Tuesday, Dec. 14