Messianic Expectations

Gospel Reflection for September 17th, 2025

Today’s Gospel is a curious one. Our Lord is speaking with the crowds and compares them to children:

“Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.’ For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” Luke 7:31-35

Why is this?

The analogy that is presented by Our Lord is one that is wrapped up in expectation. He cites the actions of playing the flute and singing a dirge as actions that ought to have produced dancing and weeping respectively but they did not and so the children are upset because they are not getting their way.

The purpose of this parabolic statement is that Our Lord is chastising the people, and in the larger context of the discussion, the Pharisees, for only looking toward their expectations to who and what the Messiah was going to be. Most people of the time had a sure idea what the Messiah would look like, that is to say, they already had preconceived notions of who this figure was going to be and what he was going to do.

Then He came. And it was not what the vast majority of people expected.

They were looking for one thing and got something wholly different and it upset them. Why wasn’t Jesus doing the things that they expected of Him? Why was He not dancing when they played the flute?

How many times do we act the same way? How many times do we expect something out of God and get upset when it doesn’t go the way we want? Are we the children of this generation who get upset when we don’t get what we want?

There is sanctity to be found in holy abandonment to God’s will. Today’s Gospel is a reminder of this. It is a reminder of what the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9.

Let today’s Gospel be a reminder to all of us that we must abandon ourselves to God’s wisdom whose thoughts are above our thoughts and whose ways are above our ways.

For more from Dr. McGovern, visit his Substack at A Thomist, Dedicated to the Theological tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Exploring Thomas' Spiritual Theology and topics in Christology and Mariology.