23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2026
Last week I heard a fascinating interview on NPR about something that seems to be getting a lot more attention these days: family estrangement — parents and children, brothers and sisters, family members who simply no longer speak to one another. What struck me was that many of these people didn't want to lose their families. In fact, many desperately wanted those relationships to work. And that's when I heard a term I had never heard before: “the missing missing reasons.” It describes situations where someone says, “I have absolutely no idea why my son won't talk to me anymore,” or, “I don't know why my daughter cut me out of her life.” But sometimes there were reasons. There had been conversations. There had been phone calls. There had been emails or letters explaining the hurt. The reasons weren't really missing. They just weren't heard. And that's what makes today's Gospel so interesting. Jesus is talking about exactly this kind of situation: a ...