Reflection for Sunday – September 20, 2026

Gloria UlterinoSunday Readings Homilies

Readings: Isaiah 55: 6-9; Philippians 1: 20c-24, 27a; Matthew 20: 1-6a 
Preacher: Gloria Ulterino

A new school year begins!  What will it be this year?  A struggle?  A great learning experience?  A time for making new friends?  And/ or growth in friendships already begun? 

 This weekend’s readings brought back so many memories of my years in school.  Good memories, for the most part.  In elementary school, there was always the adjustment each year to a new teacher (new to me, at least).  Most often, these relationships worked; for my parents expected me to do my best.  Later on, my husband and I expected the same from our three children.  And, sure enough, these expectations were generally met.

But then I remembered sending our oldest daughter off to France.  It was her junior year, and she had chosen to study in Paris, while living with a French family.  To her credit, she embraced this totally new experience… living with a French family, one chosen by her college.  Her French mother is still alive, in her early 90s!  And, our daughter maintains a relationship with her French brother, Olivier.   

 Of course, as we all know, such good relationships don’t just happen.  They require time, attention, caring, and a commitment to make the best of whatever comes along.  Or, perhaps, they require the opportunities to respond to a very important question, one raised by the upcoming readings for September 20th.   

 Paul, as always, is direct with us … challenging us, just as he did the early Philippian community: “conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ.”  Wow!  What does that mean right now?  For me?  For you?

 As I began to reflect, a woman came to mind.  A woman I had read about.  A woman who had continually challenged me: Etty Hillesum.  Who was she?  A Dutch Jew, she struggled to live out the Gospel, in her day, one day at a time.  You might recall that back in the fall of 1943, Etty had been arrested and sent to a German concentration camp.  On September 7, 1943, she and her parents and brother Mischa were deported to Auschwitz, precisely the place where she met her end in this life.  Yes, she was murdered there on November 30th of that year.  But her wrestling with goodness and truth, her ongoing reflections and writings, left their mark on me.  I found myself asking: how might my own discipleship grow in strength and meaning and courage?     

So, what does it mean for us—right here and now, in our day, at our time—to follow Christ?  To live in a way worthy of discipleship?  As a new school year begins, it might be worthwhile for each of us to reflect on this question.  As fortune would have it, I discovered that a man named Robert Francis Prevost was in Rome, 2011, at the 180th Ordinary General Chapter of his Order.   (An Augustinian leader, we now know him as Pope Leo XIV.)  On September 21st of that year, he proclaimed this:  the recent events of September eleventh are “a tragic expression of a series of problems that are becoming particularly acute everywhere.  Hatred and violence will continue to grow as long as so many people are forced to live in extreme poverty and are oppressed by so many forms of injustice.”  Augustinians, he insisted, “must bear witness to the Gospel and its values of unity, dialogue, peace, and reconciliation.”

 I would only add this: so must we all!  Every single day!  True enough: those of us who were alive and aware of events that day will never be the same.  For that was the very day that four suicide attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives.  And those of us, old enough to understand, remain scarred by those events.  In ways big and small.  In memories that refuse to go away.  With family (with whom we may or may not agree).  With co-workers.  With people who matter in our lives.  With those we rarely see or touch.  With each and every person, with whom we connect and touch (literally or physically).  In short, today and every day, we must continually ask ourselves: in what and in whom do we deeply believe?  What is the good we hope to accomplish, whether in large measure or small?  Perhaps, most of all: how do we wish to be remembered?  As we all know, 9-11 is still very much with us.  How do we respond today, at this moment in time? 

Gloria Ulterino
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