"Jesus said to them, 'Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.' 32 When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not change your minds and believe him.'"
This story is in relation to the call to conversion by our Lord Jesus Christ for everyone to repent and seek forgiveness for their sins in order to prepare them for the coming of the kingdom in heaven. In my experience, I have seen this happen a lot of times with our community Bukas Loob sa Diyos or the other charismatic communities like the Oasis of Love and many others as well. A lot who are called to a Marriage Encounter (ME) or a Life in the Spirit Seminar (LSS) do respond to the call of Jesus and when the activity is over, that's the last time we see them in church. You can say that they were akin to the son who said yes, but did not do the Father's will.
If you counted the number of people who have participated in MEs or LSS, our churches today should be overflowing; sadly, it is not so. Even the Church admits that fewer people are going to church these days, despite the fact that the message of the Good News has been given to many of the faithful. Indeed, too often, the Word of God hits us and gives us a very good "high" but when reality sets in, we immediately fall back into our old selves. The most difficult thing to get is how to reach that "high" again. Not many people understand or realize that the road to holiness is not a one-shot deal; it is a continuing process of conversion.
In the Parable of the Sower, in Matt.13: 1-23, you'll read a similar story, which goes: "A Sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots."
Again the seeds here are those who hear the word of God and say yes but it doesn't take root and like the son who says yes, yet he doesn't go to the vineyard. So it was the son who actually refused his father's order first, yet changed his mind that did the father's will.
This may surprise a lot of our readers, but this story can also be in reference to many priests or clergymen or nuns who too gave a resounding yes to the call by the father to work in his vineyard, yet when they were already ordained, they ended up not doing the father's work at all, or worse, many of them left the church for material or personal reasons. This is quite relevant in today's times when we see so much of the clergy marching our streets in protest, hand-in-hand with Godless ideologues denouncing the Arroyo government. They wear the robes of priests quite visibly, but they are not ministering to the faithful flock in the streets.
We submit that our priests and clergymen also have their rights as citizens of this impoverished nation, but too many of them are overdoing it. Their job is to do the will of the Father and that means to "Feed the lambs, tend the sheep and feed the sheep which are the very words of our Lord Jesus Christ to Peter, which you can read in John 21: 15-17
You can say that our Lord Jesus Christ is addressing a lot religious people in this story, people who already have religion in their hearts and the law within them, yet their lips reveal the emptiness inside them. Indeed, conversion isn't exclusive to tax collectors, prostitutes or sinners like us, conversion must also happen to the many men and women of the cloth, especially those who use their positions in the church to hide their evil desires. No doubt, the hardest people to convert are those who believe that they do not need conversion. Yet how many priests and nuns really have a calling from God? Here, you can see that tax collectors or prostitutes despite their low station in life have a better chance to gain eternal life than those who say, "Yes" to the Lord, but do not do his will. Have a Blessed Sunday!