October 8^th 2017. Twenty Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL: Matthew 21, 33-43

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL: Matthew 21, 33-43

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people:
"Hear another parable.
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,
put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. 
Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
When vintage time drew near,
he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. 
But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat,
another they killed, and a third they stoned. 
Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones,
but they treated them in the same way. 
Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking,
'They will respect my son.'
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another,
'This is the heir.
Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.'
They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 
What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?"
They answered him,
"He will put those wretched men to a wretched death
and lease his vineyard to other tenants
who will give him the produce at the proper times." 
Jesus said to them, "Did you never read in the Scriptures:
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes?
Therefore, I say to you,
the kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people that will produce its fruit."

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The parable of the vineyard with the wicked tenants is a parable that speaks personally to each one of us. We all have the ungrateful, bitter tenant within us. We reflect little on the many gifts that God has given us. The enormous blessings that we have received are taken for granted. Worse, these blessings are not used to produce fruits for others but are kept for ourselves. We use our gifts, our material possessions, in service of our own egos and our own projects, with disregard for the God who loves us and the people around us who deserve to be loved. But the good servant who is grateful to the Lord and who wishes to respond to his blessings also exists within each one of us.  And our Lord Jesus is the Master of the vineyard who comes to drive out the wicked tenant from our hearts and make the good tenant flourish, so that in the end we bear fruit for our world and for our God. Life is a journey of transformation where the wicked tenant within us is put to death and the good tenant comes more and more to life as we respond to the grace of God. As such, life can be described as a journey towards generosity, a journey towards the fruitfulness of self-donation. God expects this fruitfulness from us, and so do our spouses, our children, our friends. Let us reflect on the generosity of God towards us, who has blessed our vineyard with such blessings!

This Sunday we reflect on the gratitude that is due to God for all his blessings

The theme of Sunday’s liturgy is that of ingratitude, one of the all-too-common maladies of the human condition. In the first reading from Isaiah we hear of a landowner who plants a perfect vineyard so that it will produce a great harvest, but instead all it produces is bitter grapes. The bad fruits do not reflect the good treatment that it has received. Isaiah tells us that the vineyard will be destroyed, and in so doing he is making a prophecy that is relevant to the experience of Israel. The people of Israel conquer the promised land and eventually set up a monarchy with Saul, David and then Solomon. During the reign of the son of Solomon, the kingdom is divided and then a great degeneration begins. In return for all the good things that they have received, the people respond poorly, leading to the tragedy of the exile in Babylon and the loss of everything. From there they will require a new Exodus and a new process of salvation. In the light of this history, we ask the question, “Is it possible to lose the gift of God to us?” Bitterly, the answer must be “Yes, it is very possible”.

God has the right to expect fruitfulness from us after all the blessings he has planted in us

The Gospel too speaks of a landowner who gives his workers the care of a vineyard that is very similar to the one spoken of in Isaiah. When it comes for the time to reap the harvest, the servants refuse to hand the produce over and instead keep it for themselves. The landowner sends servants and envoys but they are stoned or killed. Even the son of the landowner is slaughtered by the wicked tenants. This harrowing text foretells what will happen to the Lord Jesus, but here we will continue with a reflection on the theme of ingratitude, the theme of not responding to the gifts of another, of keeping possession of the goods that we have been given and spurning  the one who has given us so much. Who is the ungrateful one? The one who keeps everything for himself and does not respond to the generosity of the other. Do we have any obligation towards the Lord or those around us? Is it possible to live authentically without producing fruit for others? If I take the gifts of others and use them only in the service of my own ego, then, in the final analysis, my life is a very lonely one. It is essential in life to recognize that God has the right to ask for fruitfulness from us. In the same way, a wife has the right to ask love from her husband; a child has the right to ask paternal care from his father; a man has the right to expect love from his brother. Love is not an obligation but it is a fruit that is expected of us towards others. What sort of life is a life without fruits, a life without love, a life that fails to respond to the gifts that have been received? At the end of the parable, the wicked tenants lose everything, and we too will end up with nothing if we do not produce the fruits of love. It is possible to lose the gift of God if we take that gift and use it in function of our own egos, our own anxieties, our own projects. In this way, we kill the son of the master and try to make the inheritance ours and ours alone. Our project is one of dominion over life, of gaining possession over things. Within each one of us lives this person who is bitter and ungrateful, unwilling to respond to the good, with a tendency to take everything for himself/herself. Within each one us this person lives.

Both the wicked and the good tenant lives inside each of us. The Master will lead us through a transformation in which the wicked ungrateful tenant is eliminated and the good tenant is permitted to produce an abundant harvest

The parable tells us that the master will come and will cut off these wicked tenants, but this can be read in a more positive manner than we usually do. The Lord comes to us at baptism to remove the ungrateful wretch who dwells in our hearts and to give the vineyard of our lives to one who knows how to produce fruit. Each one of us needs to live this transformation, this passage from ingratitude to gratitude, from aggressor to child of the Father, from the one who is embittered to the one who is filled with joy. These two “peoples” live within us all: the one who is greedy, possessive, and blind, obsessed with his own interests; and the one who produces fruit, who responds joyfully to what he has received. We must admit that both of these tendencies live in our hearts. We are ungrateful and greedy, but we also have the capacity for divine filiality.  In fact, we have been born to be fruitful, to donate ourselves, to resemble God, to possess his nature and to live everything in self-giving relationship with others.

Reflection on the generosity of God moves our hearts to produce fruits for others

This Gospel has a bitter lesson in it, and bitter it must be, for we cannot make compromises with ingratitude. Nothing is served by maintaining a part of our hearts that is ungrateful and possessive. It is like leaving cancerous cells to fester within a body that is otherwise healthy. The bitterness and selfishness that is in our hearts must be put to death, figuratively speaking. This greedy and avaricious heart is possessed by all of us, let us be honest about that. Concupiscence lives within us all. We must embark on the transformation from the ungrateful tenant to the tenant who is joyful and generous. Our journey is a journey towards generosity from start to finish. But the objective of our journey is not that we be well-behaved, righteous and coherent. If these attributes are ends in themselves, then they could well be in function of our own egos. Rather it is a process of no longer thinking about things solely as they stand in reference to ourselves and beginning to see them as unconditional gifts from God. It is reflection on the generosity of God that moves our hearts to produce fruits for others. We feel joy when we realise that we have been the object of the magnanimous gifts of God, his generosity and his patience; and that joy transforms us into magnanimous beings also, filled with joy. This Gospel challenges us to undertake the transformation. It does not want us to be left half-way between one condition and another. We are called to live the grace of baptism every day, eliminating the ungrateful one within us and opening ourselves to gratitude.