Feast of All Saints, October 31st 2020, Homily for Sunday

October 31st 2020 - Feast of All Saints.

GOSPEL: Matthew 5, 1-12

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

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Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel

GOSPEL: Matthew 5, 1-12

‘How happy are the poor in spirit; theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Happy the gentle: they shall have the earth for their heritage.

Happy those who mourn: they shall be comforted.

Happy those who hunger and thirst for what is right: they shall be satisfied.

Happy the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them.

Happy the pure in heart: they shall see God.

Happy the peacemakers: they shall be called sons of God.

Happy those who are persecuted in the cause of right: theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you.’

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

Summary . . . This Sunday we celebrate All Saints with a reading of the Gospel of the Beatitudes. The list involves a lot of passive verbs – “they shall be comforted, shall be satisfied, shall be called”, etc. What this passive form highlights is that the blessed person is someone who is on the receiving end of the work of the Lord; he is the Lord’s handiwork. Unfortunately, we often think of sanctity as something that depends on our work, our activity, our qualities. Sometimes, when we read the lives of the saints, we are inclined to focus on their exceptional qualities. But a saint is really someone who does not oppose the working of God in their lives. Technically, we are all holy from the moment of our baptism. The challenge is to allow the holiness of the Lord to manifest itself in our lives. There is not a holiness of St Francis of Assisi or of Ignatius of Loyola. There is the holiness of God that we encounter in these saints. When I encounter sanctity, I am put in touch with the power and beauty of God. But how does the holiness of God become rooted in these saints? The ground in which holiness manifests itself is in poverty of spirit. This is ground that can be common to all of us! We are all in grief, all in need of mercy, all hungry and thirsty for righteousness. We are not righteous in ourselves and know that we need to be made righteous by God. We are not the parent, or child, or priest, or friend, that we should be. God supplies for our insufficiency and incompleteness. We were made incomplete so that we might be filled with God. Those who have no need of others are people who don’t enter into relationships. They don’t need to. A person, however, who knows that he needs the Lord’s mercy and his providence is someone who has opened himself to the grace of God. The feast of All Saints is not a day to marvel at the exceptional qualities of others, but a day to allow God to work in our poverty and insufficiency. We are all called to taste the holiness of God. Holiness is not simply the fruit of our good intentions. It requires connecting ourselves to the Father, living as his sons and daughters, rather than living as subjects who are autonomous. The holiness of God involves being in relationship with the Father and allowing that relationship to shine forth in our lives.

Is sanctity about conformity to an unattractive style of life? Is it all about self-denial?

The Church celebrates sanctity by proclaiming the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are a combination of poverty, grief, hunger, thirst and even persecution. Holiness doesn’t seem all that desirable, does it? The other common idea of holiness, though, is not so attractive either. It talks about self-denial, an attitude that seem unreal, even if beautiful. Who can measure up to these ideals of holiness? It must be remembered that before the multitudes of saints canonized by recent popes - which have made holiness closer and less abstract - for centuries it was more normal to look on the saints as bearers of extraordinary human virtues. Sanctity, certainly admirable, was impractical unless one was born with exceptional qualities.

In the Gospel, however, Jesus says that sanctity is all about happiness, not misery!

Yet, the Gospel passage that the Church proclaims repeats the same word, obsessively. This word becomes like a background noise, remaining under the other things that are said. The word is "blessed" (translated “happy” in the Irish/British lectionary). It is repeated nine times, coming always at the beginning of each sentence. The rules of communication say that the most repeated thing, in general – even if it is not the most important - is still central. The word "blessed", beyond the interesting etymologies that it carries within itself, is powerfully connected to happiness, to enjoyment. Jesus begins the most important of his sermons, which will unfold for three chapters in the Gospel of Matthew, repeating the word “happiness” nine times. He did not come to bring beautiful vestments for the sacristy, but joy, happiness, exultation. A saint is someone who has scored a goal. He is one who has found the path of happiness. In fact, before proclaiming anyone a saint, the Church must recognize him as blessed, a person who has reached a state of exultation.

Holiness is not about duty but joy. 

This tells us that holiness is not a question of duty, but of pleasure. Real pleasure, pleasure that is not transitory, pleasure that is worth having. Today there are so many people who mimic happiness, who feign joy. Our culture is made up of a sea of false happiness, with highs, self-affirmations, victories over others, transgressions. And it is a world full of emptiness. These false joys consume everything and leave nothing. They demand that we seek even greater “highs”, bigger risks, increased doses. Such behaviour, however, only leads to even greater emptiness. This false joy claims that the only other alternative is a mediocre life made up of security and comfort. But holiness is not mediocre! It is a life of colour, of passion, of greatness, of beauty. It's what a boy and girl want when they get married. It's what a child wants when he has great aspirations and dreams. Holiness involves going straight to the target and reaching the goal of life. It involves learning to love and to love a lot. True happiness has only one source: true love.

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October 25th 2020. The Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

October 25th 2020. The Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL: Matthew 22, 34-40

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

 

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Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel

 

GOSPEL: Matthew 22, 34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they got together and,

to disconcert him, one of them put a question,

‘Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?’ 

Jesus said, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the greatest and the first commandment.

The second resembles it:

You must love your neighbour as yourself.

On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.’

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

 

Summary . . .  In the Gospel, Jesus proclaims the shema, so central to the orthodox faith of every devout Jew, the commandment to love God with all of our heart, soul and mind. Then he tells us that a second commandment “resembles” the first: you must love your neighbour as yourself. What does Jesus mean by “resembles”? Is he pointing out some kind of structural similarity? No, what Jesus is saying is that this second commandment belongs irreplaceably with the first. To obey one commandment implies obeying the other. If I “love” God and forget my neighbour, then my love is false. If I “love” my neighbour and ignore God, then my love is false. Authentic love requires both the “vertical” and “horizontal” elements. Sometimes in the Church we find people who focus on the relationship with God to the exclusion of the people around them. Often, they are preoccupied with precise liturgical norms and rubrics. But the relationship with God is deficient if it is not translated into the tenderness of fraternal love. On the other hand, if I am devoted to fraternal love and charity without reference to the invisible, then my “love” will also be deficient. To the extent that my “love” is founded purely on human considerations, then that love will be as small as we are ourselves! Love needs to be open to the greatness of that which transcends us. Christ banished the darkness of this world by showing the love of God for us from the cross. I need to be open to the love of God in order to love my brothers and sisters in the right way. I must love my brothers and sisters in order to love God genuinely. These two commandments are inseparably united in the person of Jesus. In him, the relationship with God became a relationship with our brothers and sisters. As Jesus says in the last line, on this love for God and neighbour everything depends. If the things we do are not done out of love, what sense have they? This great Gospel puts all the secondary and trivial things in perspective. Nothing matters but love for God and neighbour.  

At the end of our lives, the only question we will ask is: Did I love?

The question from Sunday’s Gospel: “What is the greatest commandment?" What is the most important thing to do? What is it that decides everything? It is not so difficult to answer: when events prompt us to look at our lives - and this can happen for a thousand reasons – the first question we ask ourselves is if we have loved others genuinely, if anyone is happy because of us. Often, when a priest hears the last confession or the last worry of a dying person, there is only one real question: did I love? Have I been a good father, a good mother, did I leave anything good to those around me?

The devil tries to distract us from the priority of love. He does not need to make us do evil to achieve his purpose. It is enough to distract us and make us fixated with secondary, empty, things.

Jesus is right: loving God and loving one's neighbour is all that matters. Everything depends on this. This insight can illuminate the futility of a thousand secondary things. We are constantly distracted from this priority by the work of the evil one. He does not need to make us do evil. It is enough for him to distract us from doing good. He keeps us engaged in secondary things, gets us caught up with activities that are not bad in themselves, but which simply are not love. Outside of love there is no happiness, but only substitutes for happiness.

Scripture tells me to love my neighbour as myself. Does this mean that my first priority must be to love myself?

Yet, there is more to love than the popular viewpoint realizes. In reality, everyone talks about love, everyone sings about it, everyone writes about it. But we have to examine what they are talking about, because the world is full of chatter about false, transitory and ambiguous love. In fact, it is not true to say that “love” brings “happiness”. What is true is that only real love brings real happiness. In recent decades, much preaching has focused on the phrase of Jesus, taken in turn from the Book of Leviticus: "You must love your neighbour as yourself". Sometimes the conclusions drawn from this phrase have been appropriate, but at other times a simplistic equation has been made of the sort: the Lord tells us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves, and therefore if one does not love himself he ends up not loving others either; conclusion: you must first learn to love yourself! 

The problem with focussing on loving yourself is that it is impossible using your own strengths. Only the knowledge that we are loved Christ can free us of self-doubt or self-hatred.

Fifty years ago it was urgent to underline this point, because we had to free ourselves from an image of love dominant at that time which only spoke of impersonal obligation. However, this led to further problems: to love yourself, to accept yourself, is not just difficult, it's impossible! The fact is that I need to be loved if I am not to despise myself. It is only when I am loved that I escape the trap of thinking that there is something wrong with me. Only Christ can lead me to look upon myself without horror, without that sense of insufficiency that I carry inside. 

The solution is not to focus on love of self, but to see that our true centre is outside of ourselves, in communion with Christ and others.

There is a mystery here! I must love my neighbour as myself, but if the first obligation becomes to love oneself, then I can become so focussed on myself that I forget the neighbour entirely! The task of that sentence is to get us out of the vortex of self-destructive narcissism. Narcissus, in Greek mythology, was the one who dies in the well of his own image because he does not listen to the nymph Echo who calls him to look at her and love her, and this is today's problem: obsession with ourselves. Christ leads us to our true centre, which is love, but this centre is outside of us, it is in relationship, in communion, in unity. Because it is precisely when I am with God and with others that I discover myself. Nowadays there is a big emphasis on teaching children to look for self-fulfilment, but what we really need to teach them is to look beyond themselves and be with others.

October 18th 2020. The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL: Matthew 22, 15-21

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

 

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Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel

 

GOSPEL: Matthew 22, 15-21

The Pharisees went away to work out between them how to trap Jesus in what he said. And they sent their disciples to him, together with the Herodians, to say,

‘Master, we know that you are an honest man and teach the way of God in an honest way,

and that you are not afraid of anyone, because a man’s rank means nothing to you.

Tell us your opinion, then. Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

But Jesus was aware of their malice and replied,

‘You hypocrites! Why do you set this trap for me? Let me see the money you pay the tax with.’

They handed him a denarius and he said, ‘Whose head is this? Whose name?’ 

‘Caesar’s’ they replied.

He then said to them, ‘Very well, give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.’

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

 

Summary . . .  This Gospel passage is sometimes interpreted to refer to the necessity of a balanced division of loyalties: a certain debt is owed to God and a certain debt is owed to the state . . . But this would be a fairly superficial reading. Let us consider the passage more closely. The Pharisees and Herodians are the most unlikely of allies! One is on the side of Rome and the other is against, yet they join forces to try to trap Jesus, asking him if people should pay tax to the Romans or not. As he always does, Jesus lifts the discourse on to a higher level, refusing to be bogged down in questions that ultimately derive from the enemy of humanity, Satan. The Lord takes a coin which bears the image of the Roman emperor, with an inscription that proclaimed him to be divine. And then Jesus says: “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God”. The real question the Lord wants us to consider is this: what really belongs to this world and what really is owed to God? The world tries to dominate our lives, our relationships, our affections, our loyalties. It seeks to manipulate and exploit the deepest things within us for motives of worldly gain. In fact, the currencies that we use bear the images of worldly powers, but each one of us is made in the image and likeness of God! Woe to us if we give to the world those things that belong properly to God! Woe to us if we turn the faith into an instrument for advancing our own material wellbeing or power! Let us recall the martyrs of the first centuries who were killed because they refused to acknowledge the emperor to be divine. Let us follow that army of people who exercised their baptismal discernment correctly and gave back to the world, the flesh and the devil what belongs to it. St Francis gave back to his father all of his worldly possessions, even his clothes. Once we belong to God, then we will, quite naturally, give to Caesar what belongs to him. We will be good, law-abiding citizens, but as a consequence of the fact that we are living for heaven. This is a life ordered to what is good and true, the concrete realisation of the fact that we were made in His image and likeness and belong only to him. 

In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus demonstrates to us a good technique of discourse. Often we are bogged down in questions that do not lead anywhere. Jesus answers the question with another which lifts the conversation onto a higher level.

In Sunday’s Gospel, two unlikely factions become allies in an attempt to ensnare Jesus. Herod was on the side of the Romans, since they maintained the king in power. The Pharisees were against Roman rule, but they still united with the Herodians to lay this trap for Jesus: "Is it lawful, or not, to pay the tax to Caesar?" If Jesus had answered yes, he would have put himself on the side of the Roman invader and oppressor; if he had said not to pay, he could be denounced to the authorities as an instigator of rebellion. In response, Jesus does what he always does: he brings the discourse on to a higher and more noble level. It is a good opportunity for us to learn from this technique of his: he regularly answers questions with other questions. Often, we are besotted with the wrong questions. Instead of torturing ourselves in searching for answers, we need to jettison the questions that are misleading us. 

What is the higher level to which Jesus raises the discourse? He challenges us to consider what really belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God.

Then Jesus asks to examine the coin used to pay the tax. Normally, the Roman Senate did not permit the image of the emperor to appear on the currency, but, during the very years of Jesus’ public ministry, the emperor’s image was permitted, along with an inscription that affirmed him as "divine". The first martyrs of the Church knew all about this self-deification of the Empire. Many Christians were led to the gallows because they refused to perform sacrifices to the emperor. All regimes, before and after Rome, have some version of the public cult of the absolute leader, up to the most tragic modern examples. When Jesus sees the coin, he replies: "Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God". This raises the question: “What, exactly, belongs to whom?” This is the level to which Jesus moves the discourse.

What is of Caesar? What is of God? Our very selves, our life, our heart, our relationships. Money bears the image and inscription of this world, but humanity bears the image and likeness of God.

An immense group of people in the history of the Church have exercised this baptismal discernment, giving back to the world what belongs to it, while handing over to God what really belongs to him. Francis of Assisi returned even his clothes to his father to take on the clothes of new life, a life that was poor in the things of this world, but immensely wealthy in truth. Money, in fact, bears the image and inscription of this world and its rulers, but man carries within himself the image and likeness of God. From Christ onwards, an army of men and women will restore to the world, the flesh and the devil what belongs to them, while handing themselves over to God to live according to the truth of heaven. What belongs to God? The life and heart of man, his love, his relationships and many other things. The world demands these things only to abuse and exploit them. Woe to us if we give the world what belongs properly to God, if we instrumentalise the faith in the interests of wellbeing or power. In every Christian act, we free ourselves from the world to give back to the Father what is his: ourselves.

October 11th 2020. The Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL: Matthew 22, 1-14

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

 

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Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel

 

GOSPEL: Matthew 22, 1-14

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding. He sent his servants to call those who had been invited, but they would not come. Next he sent some more servants. “Tell those who have been invited” he said “that I have my banquet all prepared, my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready. Come to the wedding.” But they were not interested: one went off to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his servants, maltreated them and killed them. The king was furious. He despatched his troops, destroyed those murderers and burnt their town. Then he said to his servants, “The wedding is ready; but as those who were invited proved to be unworthy, go to the crossroads in the town and invite everyone you can find to the wedding”.

So these servants went out on to the roads and collected together everyone they could find, bad and good alike; and the wedding hall was filled with guests. When the king came in to look at the guests he noticed one man who was not wearing a wedding garment, and said to him, “How did you get in here, my friend, without a wedding garment?” And the man was silent. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth”. For many are called, but few are chosen.

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

 

Summary . . . In the parable of the wedding feast we find the strong and paradoxical language that would have been characteristic of the Jewish mode of expression two thousand years ago. A king organizes a wonderful banquet for his son’s wedding, but the invitees respond badly, even killing the messengers who bore the invitation. Why do they react so violently? Is this parable a bit “over the top”? But, if we think for a moment, it is actually quite common for us to be suspicious of God. We tend to think that talk of God and his invitation to follow him is all designed to trap us into doing something that we don’t want. We fear that God doesn’t really want us to be joyful but demands something burdensome and tedious from us. We have difficulty in appreciating that he is really calling us to true joy. As a result, we react to his invitation with coldness or aggression. We fear that God wishes to drag us away from the things that really matter to us. What are those things? The parable lists them: business, property, our own projects. But God is truly inviting us to authentic joy! The Gospel emphasizes this with the image of the sumptuous wedding feast rejected by people who are too busy with their tedious business affairs! At the end of the parable we hear of a person who has entered the wedding feast without the correct garment. Special garments would have been given at the entrance to the feast and this man evidently refused to put it on. To enter into God’s joy, we must change! We cannot enter into his joy if we are still weighed down by our own garment, our own way of hiding our nakedness, our fixations with our own concerns. The parable challenges us to leave our own affairs behind so that we can enter into the joyful affairs of God.

The Jewish mode of expression of two thousand years ago was strong and paradoxical. We must be ready for that when we read Jesus’ parables.

The Semitic language of the first century was paradoxical, and communication was often couched in strong words and by means of sharp contrasts. This is the language of the Gospels. Anyone who cannot accept this paradoxical language, will have difficulty understanding the language of Jesus of Nazareth. In Sunday's Gospel, we find this mode of expression.  The discourse goes from one extreme to another with great rapidity and with no middle ground. It is the story of a wedding invitation, that is, the call to something beautiful: “I have prepared the banquet; my oxen and fattened animals are already killed and everything is ready; come to the wedding!”

Why do the invitees react so violently? It is quite common that people are suspicious of God or of “goodness”. They think that talk of God or of virtue is just sophistry designed to trap us into doing something that we don’t want.

But the invitation to this banquet receives bitter and violent responses. Some of the invitees even insult and kill the messengers. They interpret the king's invitation as a form of aggression, something from which to defend oneself. Why so? It is actually common enough for people to react violently to others who have good intentions. Often, people try to do something beautiful and only get harsh, sarcastic and cold reactions. There is an ancient doubt sown in the heart of man: a suspicion of God and of goodness; a prejudice that talk of God or of virtue is only deceit or a waste of time, utopias that distract from the things that really matter.

We have a tendency to think that God wants something from us, something burdensome and tedious. We have difficulty in appreciating that he is really calling us to true joy. So we react to his invitation with coldness, aggression or violence. We fear that God wishes to drag us away from the things that really matter to us: business, property, projects, our own promotion.

This text challenges us to distinguish between authentic life and the materialistic life that we make into a priority. The wedding feast, an event of pure joy, represents life in its fullness. But the people invited are more interested in property, business and income. When God invites them to a party, they perceive this as a nuisance. Joy becomes a waste of time. By projecting our utilitarianism into God, we understand his invitations as traps. “God is like us”, we think. “Therefore his invitation is not really an invitation to joy but to get something out of us, something burdensome and tedious.” We have a tendency to perceive the relationship with God and his will as something that goes against the things that are really important to us: our business, our projects, our schemes. Instead, God’s invitation is truly an invitation to joy. The result is that these men end up working rather than enjoying a wedding party. It  doesn't seem like such a smart choice! Yet such is the stupidity of man, who prefers to continue to live in a state of anxious toil, oppressed by his endless chain of problems, rather than abandon himself to the love of the Father.

To enter into God’s joy, we must change our garment. We cannot enter into his joy if we are wearing the garment of sorrow, recrimination or revenge. We must leave our own affairs behind and enter into the joyful affairs of God.

Then there is the puzzle of the poor man who enters the wedding without the wedding garment. What we are not told is that a special robe would have been given to each guest at the entrance, and it can be deduced that this man refused the robe. It is clear that one cannot enter into God's joy without changing clothes. One cannot partake of the feast of God while continuing to hold on the old dress of one's failed efforts, one's useless fixations; there is a new garment to be put on. The master says: how dare you not change when you are with me? How can you continue to wear the garment of mourning when I have called you to joy, the garment of complaint when I have called you to happiness; the garment of revenge when I called you to love? It is time to leave our own affairs behind and enter into God's affairs, which is a joyful feast.

October 4th 2020. The Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL: Matthew 21, 33-43

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

 

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GOSPEL: Matthew 21, 33-43

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people :

‘Listen to another parable. There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard; he fenced it round, dug a winepress in it and built a tower; then he leased it to tenants and went abroad. When vintage time drew near he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his servants, thrashed one, killed another and stoned a third. Next he sent some more servants, this time a larger number, and they dealt with them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them. “They will respect my son” he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, “This is the heir. Come on, let us kill him and take over his inheritance.” So they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They answered, ‘He will bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will deliver the produce to him when the season arrives’.

Jesus said to them,

‘Have you never read in the scriptures:

It was the stone rejected by the builders

that became the keystone.

This was the Lord’s doing

and it is wonderful to see?

I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.’

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

 

Summary . . . The parable in Sunday’s Gospel tells the story of the tenants of the beautiful vineyard of grace that the Lord has given his people. The behaviour of the tenants is horrific! Not only do they kill the master’s servants, they also kill his son. Are we those tenants? As we read this parable, one of the questions we can ask is, “Does the Father have the right to expect fruit from us?” We have been given life by him and many gifts. It is normal that he should expect us to be fruitful! But how does he ask us to be fruitful? Has he knocked on your door recently? The Lord knocks on our door through the people around us. Children have the right to expect their parents to lay aside their own needs and to care for them selflessly. Parishioners have the right to expect their priest to be a man of God rather than a selfish bachelor. Our friends have the right to our fidelity and assistance. One thousand times, God asks us to bear fruit! What is the alternative to bearing fruit? The alternative is the taking of life. God has given us beautiful gifts. If we keep the fruit of these gifts to ourselves, then we engage in the act of draining life from the works of God. In reality, it is always the Son who is sent by God to receive our fruitfulness. We receive this calling through the Lord’s word, through various appeals that come to us for conversion. In the parable, the master says, “They will pay attention to my son”. This point – being attentive to what is in front of me, being aware of the manner in which God is asking me to be fruitful in the present moment – is fundamental. We are constantly being invited by God to be fruitful, to be beautiful, to spread the Gospel. The Lord doesn’t send us a written request! He sends his Son through the others that we encounter. The sick person in front of us, the beggar - this is God. “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me”. In the parable, the murderous tenant who keeps the fruit for himself ends up losing the kingdom. Each one of us has this “old man” inside. Through baptism we are called to put on the new man. This spiritual man inherits the kingdom, because for him the request to bear fruit is joyful. For the man of flesh, the request for fruitfulness brings only anger and violence. Let us pass from greed to generosity, from possessiveness to gift.

In the story from Isaiah, it is the vineyard that produces bad fruit, whilst in Jesus’ parable, it is the tenants who mismanage the fruit in a dishonest way. In response, Jesus states very clearly that those tenants will be punished severely.

The parable of the murderous tenants is tragic and disturbing, but it is wise to consider it carefully, even if it is a text that is not a favourite among priests and faithful. Many priests might find it challenging to give a homily on this Gospel, but maybe they should reconsider. It is the story of a master who furnishes a vineyard with everything it needs to be fruitful. The parable mirrors the account from Isaiah that we find in the first reading. In that case, it was the vineyard itself that produced bitter fruit, while Jesus shifts the attention to the peasants to whom the vineyard is entrusted, the ones who manage the yield in a dishonest and violent way. In Isaiah, God responds to the bad production of the vineyard with a declaration of impending doom. Often, in the New Testament, this type of tone disappears, but not here. Jesus repeats those threats with renewed harshness. They are now no longer addressed to a symbolic vineyard, but to criminal tenants. What is all this for? 

Does God have the right to ask us for fruits? Yes! He gave us life and many gifts. Does he really come to ask us for these fruits? Yes! He comes by means of all the people around us who ask us for patience and love in our duties as a sibling, a parent, a friend.

One thing has to be asked: does the master, who is the heavenly Father, have the right to ask us for fruit? Let's think about it: does God has the right to knock on my door and ask what I am doing with the life He has given me? Does God have the right to ask me if I am utilizing the gifts He has given me? Is it right that the Lord asks for fruit from all his Church, which is his vineyard? Before answering, let's try to ask another question: does God really come to ask for fruit? Yes, many times. He knocks on my door by means of all those around me who ask me to bear fruit, as a man, as a brother, as a father, as a Christian, as a priest or whatever. God is hidden in the child who asks us to have patience during the challenging trials of a relationship, or in an elderly or sick relative who asks if there is a little love for them in our hearts.

The people around us have the right to expect fruitfulness from us. And it is what brings us true happiness

God has planted so much in the lives of all of us. We have been welcomed by him, forgiven and loved. All of this is willed by him so that we too might attain the capacity to love.  A spouse expects us to be fruitful, a friend asks us to be fruitful. And it is good that they do so because people have the right to find in a priest, for example, a man of God and not an individualistic and narcissistic bachelor. A child has the right to find in a mother an adult woman who knows how to lay aside her own needs and who teaches her tenderness. When someone does not find this in his priest or his mother, he is right to complain! There are fruits that any human being is expected to bear, and, in addition, there are the gifts of the Master's Vineyard, which is his holy people, the mission he entrusts to us and all that is given to us as Christians. The world is asking the Church for the love it preaches, and not just words only. It is worthwhile to be challenged by the seriousness of this parable, because bearing fruit is what gives us greatest happiness. On the other hand, reasoning in a violent and self-referential way like the peasants in the story means turning life into something degenerate. We were born to love, and only true love, which comes from Christ, can give us true joy. It is good to bear fruit.