15 December 2026 · Latin Rite
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“For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.” Matthew 21:32
Zephaniah condemns a proud city that “has listened to no voice” and promises a different future: God will purify the lips of the peoples, and “I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the LORD.” This humble remnant is the true Israel of Advent: Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, Elizabeth, the shepherds.
Jesus tells of two sons. One refuses to work in the vineyard but later changes his mind and goes; the other says yes but does not go. The religious leaders gave God many words; tax collectors and prostitutes gave him their repentance. “Even after you saw it, you did not change your minds.” Advent asks not for fine words but for a changed heart. It is never too late to turn and go into the vineyard.
Theme: “Words or deeds?”
God's humble remnant, the son who changed his mind, sinners who believed.
“For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the LORD.” Zephaniah 3:12
“For the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” Luke 1:49
Apply: Let someone else have the credit today.
“The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.” Isaiah 29:13
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Matthew 7:21
Apply: Turn one “no” to God into a “yes” today.
“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18
“For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.” Matthew 21:32
Apply: Go to Confession before Christmas.
God builds with the humble.
Let your yes become action.
Take-home resolution: Finish one good work you started and abandoned.
Dear friends, the prophet Zephaniah speaks of a city that is rebellious and defiled: it has listened to no voice, it has accepted no correction (Zephaniah 3:1–2). Then God promises: I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord (Zephaniah 3:12).
God's future belongs to the humble: the anawim, the poor of the Lord. Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, Simeon and Anna belong to this humble remnant who waited for the Messiah.
In the Gospel Jesus tells a parable. A man has two sons. He asks the first to work in the vineyard; he says, I will not, but later changes his mind and goes. He asks the second; he says, I go, sir, but does not go. Which of the two did the will of his father? (Matthew 21:28–31).
Then Jesus says something shocking to the religious leaders: the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came in the way of righteousness, and they believed him, but you did not (Matthew 21:31–32).
The second son represents those who say yes with their lips but no with their lives. The first son represents sinners who first say no but then repent. Both are in us. We say yes at Mass, then no at home. We refuse God, and then, by grace, we change our minds.
It is never too late to change our minds. This Advent, let us be the son who repents. Let us look honestly at where we have said yes but not gone, and go now. And let us ask to belong to the humble remnant who seek refuge in the Lord. Amen.
Children, one son said no but then obeyed; the other said yes but did not. Jesus wants us to say yes and then really do it!
Lord, the poor cry out and you hear them. Make me humble and lowly, change my heart where I have said no to you, and let my yes be more than words. Amen.
In the last days before Christmas the Church looks for the people who will be ready to receive the Lord. Zephaniah sees a proud city purified until only a humble and lowly people remains. In the Gospel Jesus tells the chief priests and elders of two sons: the one who said no and then went, and the one who said yes and stayed at home. Both readings ask the same Advent question: who is really ready? Psalm 34 gives the answer in one line: “The Lord hears the cry of the poor.”
Setting.
Zephaniah preached in Judah in the days of King Josiah (1:1), who reigned from about 640 to 609 BC. His book opens with the day of the Lord, “a day of wrath” (1:15), the line from which the medieval hymn Dies Irae takes its first words. Chapter 3 begins with a cry against an unnamed “oppressing city”; the context shows that it is Jerusalem herself. The lectionary passes over vv. 3–8, the charge against her officials, judges, prophets and priests, and moves straight from the sin to the promise.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord.” (3:9)
The promise reaches beyond Israel. The judgment on Jerusalem does not end in ruin but in worship by all peoples together.
“For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly.” (3:12)
God removes the “proudly exultant” (v. 11), and those who remain have nothing to boast of. Their only security is the next line: they seek refuge in the name of the Lord.
“they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths.” (3:13)
Humility is not weakness of character. It produces truthfulness. Revelation uses the same picture for the redeemed who follow the Lamb: “in their mouth no lie was found” (Revelation 14:5).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism sees in this remnant the bearers of Israel's hope: “the poor and humble of the Lord” (CCC 64), who converge with the promises of the Messiah and of the Spirit (CCC 711) and are “the great achievement” of the Spirit's hidden mission (CCC 716). The Second Vatican Council places Mary at the head of them: she “stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord” (Lumen Gentium 55). That is why this reading belongs to Advent: it describes the people among whom Christ would be born.
Setting.
Jesus has entered Jerusalem and cleansed the temple. As he teaches there, “the chief priests and the elders of the people” ask by what authority he acts, and he answers with a question about John the Baptist, which they refuse to answer (21:23–27). This parable follows at once. It is the first of three addressed to these leaders; the wicked tenants and the wedding banquet come next. The vineyard is an old image for God's people (Isaiah 5:1–7).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went.” (21:29)
A note on the text. Ancient manuscripts differ in the order of the two sons. Many have the order of the NRSV: the first refuses and then goes. Others, including Codex Vaticanus, reverse it: the first says yes and does not go, the second refuses and then goes, and the answer in v. 31 changes to match. The Malayalam POC follows that second order. The meaning is the same in both.
“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (21:31)
Tax collectors worked for the occupying power and were despised as traitors and cheats; prostitutes were shunned. Jesus does not praise their sins. He praises what they did when they heard John: they believed and turned.
“and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.” (21:32)
The leaders had a second chance. They could have watched sinners being changed and been moved by it. To see God at work in others and still not turn is the saddest part of the story.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that Jesus invites sinners to the table of the Kingdom (CCC 545) and that the prayer of faith is not only saying “Lord, Lord” but disposing the heart to do the Father's will (CCC 2611). Interior conversion, a radical turning back to God, is the heart of the Christian life (CCC 1430–1431). St Paul suggests a last word on the two sons: there is a third Son whose word and deed are one, for in him every one of God's promises is a “Yes” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
Is Jesus rejecting the Jewish people here?
No. He is speaking to “the chief priests and the elders of the people” (21:23) in a particular dispute over John. The tax collectors and prostitutes who believed were Jews too, and so were John and Jesus himself. The Church firmly rejects any blame laid on the Jewish people as such (Nostra Aetate 4; CCC 597–598).