Homily for September 30, 2012: 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

[saveliberty]

Homily for September 30, 2012: 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

September 29, 2012 By Deacon Greg Kandra

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In the gospel we just heard, we encounter a word and a subject that many people these days don’t want to hear, and don’t want to talk about. It’s a word that rarely leaves our lips, because it makes people uncomfortable.

 

The word is “Sin.”

 

As much as we don’t like to talk about it outside the walls of this church, sin is something that shouldn’t be kept quiet. Read the papers, and you can understand why.

 

This week, the New York Times reported on the burgeoning cheating scandal at the elite Stuyvesant High School. About 60 teenagers were caught – and they revealed that they didn’t cheat because they were afraid of failing; they cheated because they wanted to get an A instead of a B. It wasn’t isolated, either. There was a vast network of young people who cheated using cell phones and e-mail messages. And it wasn’t just tests. When one teacher discovered a student had plagiarized for a paper, he gave the student an F, but was later pressured by an assistant principal to give a passing grade. “I was told I was too Draconian” the teacher explained. This has been called the most notorious case of high school cheating in the United States. Yet, in the Times article, no one expressed regret, or remorse, or shame.

No one dared to call it a sin.