21st Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2026 - Year A

Jeff Bagnall • 19 August 2026

During the time of the prophet Isaiah, the kingdom of Judah was threatened by the Assyrian empire from the east. Isaiah had recommended trusting in God to save the people and God would be with them. But the king and leaders didn’t see it this way, they felt they would loose, and forfeit their privileged positions, if not their lives. They made some sort of a pact with the emperor of Assyria so that Jerusalem was spared, although the rest of the country was invaded. So Isaiah, as we read today, reprimand Shebna the royal steward, and announced a replacement, who will be the leader to make decisions in the future; he will have the symbols of office, the sash, the robe, the key to the ordering of the country’s affairs, and will keep them safe like the peg for a tent. This passage seems to be in the mind of Matthew when he writes of Peter receiving the leadership office in our gospel reading. But the historical events behind it challenge us severely in our relationship with our world and with God, just as the sermon on the mount in the New Testament does: if anyone wants your shirt give them your coat as well, if anyone strikes you turn the other cheek, love you enemies… (see Matthew 5:38-48).

Paul in this letter to the Romans has been expressing his struggle with the way things are going. The chosen people, the race he belongs to, the Jews, have by and large rejected Jesus and his following. Paul has seen that in fact this has enabled, or at least eased, the presentation of Christ to the Gentiles, the non-Jews, and many of them becoming the chosen ones of God. This is especially difficult for Paul as his calling is to preach to the Gentiles and he has had success in this. So God, as only He can, has brought some good out of the rejection of Jesus by the Jews, just as God will bring the creation, His work of art, to a beautiful fulfillment through all the disasters and human failings which are still going on. Catching a glimpse of this mystery, and being able to entertain this hope with confidence, Paul can only praise God for His wonders in creation. And this expression of amazed joy is what we have today in our reading.

Our reading today from Matthew is an account in Mark’s gospel which Matthew has before him. It is when Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is. It is a turning point in the story of Jesus’ public life; after this His life’s journey moves towards its end. Peter says he believes that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, but it is most likely that his idea of what this means is not what it will turn out to be. For the Jews thought Jesus, the anointed one (the Christ or Messiah) was the one from God who would bring the Jewish people into their own – the climax of the national ambition, the nation above all nations, worldly success. Matthew adds to this story from Mark Jesus’ confirmation that Peter is to be leader of His followers, with what he says goes and what he rules out is ruled out. It is after this central event that Jesus’ begins to tell the disciples that He will suffer and die; a message which they cannot really believe for it is so opposite to what they expect of the Messiah. The appointment of Peter, who in Matthew’s time was a significant leader of the Christian communities, has the same pattern of being unexpected, for Peter was a rash person, a Galilean fisherman, the one who denied he even knew Christ at the time of His trial; when it is such an unlikely person that leads, it is quite obvious that if there is any success, it comes from God’s work not from this human leader. This is as mysterious as the issue that we have seen Paul had struggled with in his letter to the Romans and the challenge of Isaiah to just trust in God. We might say, God moves in mysterious ways, and wonder about the saying, God helps those who help themselves.

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Jeff Bagnall was a lecturer for many years at Craiglockhart College teaching RE to many future Catholic Primary teachers.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2026 - Year A

by Jeff Bagnall • 8 October 2026

The first reading is a very upbeat announcement of the good times that the Lord will bring about for all nations. This is not just about the freedom of the Jews who have been in captivity, but it is a universal message of good times, with plenty of all the fruits of the earth and no fear of troubles. The destruction of death might be seen by Christians as the announcement of life after death, but when this message was first delivered, probably in the 6 th century BC, it meant no more will enemies kill each other. All these wonderful gifts from God are, however, delivered to all peoples “on this mountain,” a phrase that initially refers to the city of Jerusalem which is centred upon and around a prominent hill in the countryside; though the phrase was used symbolically to refer to all the people of Israel. So we see in this passage the basis for a future view of what God will do for all people on earth, but with the restriction of it being centred on the people of Israel; it is the vision of a prophet who sees the future darkly, reading it from the worldly state of affairs that he interprets from the standpoint of his assured belief that his is also the god of those who share his faith. We know ourselves that many of us Christians are caught in similar limitations in our vision of God’s relationship with the whole world and its people.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2026 - Year A

by Jeff Bagnall • 30 September 2026

In the first reading we have a very good illustration of a successful approach to delivering bad news when you are a prophet and that is your job. The book of Isaiah has been heavily edited, and our reading from chapter 5 is very likely the first public appearance of the prophet. If you want the crowd to listen to you, you don’t want to be known as a prophet of doom. So Isaiah draws a crowd by saying he is going to sing a song, like a street busker setting up his spot. It’s a song, he says, about his friend; it’s told as though it is about a man setting up a new vineyard, but it is really about unrequited love. He did everything one should for the vineyard to be successful, but it just produced (literally) stinking grapes. The friend then questions the crowd: “is there anything more I could have done?” And he tells them he is going to completely wreck the area and make it a wasteland. Then, when the crowd has grown and is listening intently, like a punch-line the prophet announces: “this song is about the Lord and you Israel!” The image of the vineyard became quite popular in the sayings of prophets and even among the people themselves; one of their hymns is the psalm that follows the reading for today.