Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time       

Matthew 21:33-43

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini

A parable designed to strike fear into our hearts and spur us on to bear fruit!

Sometimes a holy sensation of fear is just what we need to make us change our ways and undergo conversion! The intention of this Gospel is exactly that – to spur us into action for fear of the consequences. The parable that Jesus places in front of us this Sunday is the story of a landowner who plants his vineyard and provides it with everything needed for it to flourish. Then he places it under the care of tenants and goes on a journey. These tenants have been given a gift - the gift of a vineyard to be managed. When harvest time arrives, the landowner sends his servants to request the fruits of the vineyard, but the servants are treated badly. One is beaten, another stoned and a third one killed. So the landowner dispatches servants in greater numbers, but these are again treated in the same way. Then the proprietor decides to send his own son, thinking that the tenants will surely respect the offspring of the owner. But instead of seeing the son with the father's eyes, they reckon that this is their perfect chance to seize his inheritance.

The trap that Jesus set for his original listeners is also a trap for US!

At the end of the parable, Jesus asks, "What will the owner of the vineyard do to these tenants?" His listeners respond that the owner will surely kill them and give the vineyard over to other tenants who will produce fruit at the proper time. In this way, Jesus traps his listeners, because they are the same ones that, in the previous passages, fiercely opposed Jesus, who in his person is none other than the Son sent by the Father.

            When we listen to this parable today, we also are led by Jesus into concurring with the conclusion that, yes, these tenants most certainly deserve to be punished severely.  It is important to be aware that we too have been led into the same trap as the original listeners of the parable! The question that we must ask ourselves is "Does God have the right to ask us to yield fruit?"

            In the case of the parable of the vineyard, we can see without any doubt that the owner has the right to ask the tenants for fruits. In our own case, are we under the impression that God does not have the right to ask the same of us? The gift of life that we have been given is a vineyard. Those of us who are baptized have been given a series of gifts in the sacraments. We are not just talking about the physical sort of gifts given to the tenants of the vineyard, but the gifts of the vineyard of the Lord. We have received the Word of God, many brothers and sisters in the Lord, the Magisterium of the church, the Holy Father. Do we think that all of this is our property, or our right? Is my attitude the same as that of the tenants of the vineyard? Do I, like them, think that my life is mine and no-one should dare to ask me to bear produce!

            Once I gave baptismal instruction to an adult, Michele, and he told me about the time he first opened his heart to the true meaning of life. He had passed his days as an atheist continually asking the question, "What meaning has life?" One day, when confronted with Christianity, he realized that life was asking him for meaning; that life had been confronting him with a series of questions that he hadn't responded to. And in order to learn to respond to them, he would have to recognize the existence of a higher authority, an owner who was looking for something from him. At that point he began the process of discovering the meaning of his life.

Life is not something to be possessed and used, but something to be given freely

It is a lazy and sterile attitude that seeks to possess life selfishly, that seeks to appropriate one's own vineyard, that sees life as being wholly mine, to be used as I alone see fit, that considers the body to my property, and time to be my time to be spent as I wish. This attitude to life is completely mistaken! If we have been born to love, then everything is the complete opposite. We possess our time truly only when we give it as a gift to others. That which is not ours cannot be given freely because it is not ours. And by the same token, it is only when we give something away freely that it attains its true meaning and becomes fully ours.

How does the owner challenge us to bear fruit? By sending servants that demand fruit of us.

Life is all about bearing fruit. There is no greater joy than to give one's life, to expend one's life for others. Life is not about the construction of a comfortable place in which I, and I alone, am in command. We must discover the higher authority, the vineyard owner that asks us to produce fruit, who helps us to grow, who pulls us out of ourselves, who makes us become fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers, who enables us to give our lives. How does he do that? This owner, this higher authority, sends many servants to us, one after the other, and the role of these servants is to demand fruit from us. These are people who are on our doorstep, in our midst, close to us, and we don't recognize them. In an in-law or spouse there is Christ who is saying "Bear me fruit". In a son there is Christ who is saying "Bear me fruit". "If you do it to the least of this you have done it to me". Mother Teresa of Calcutta repeated this continually; it was her fundamental motto - "you have done it to me" One must discover the beauty and fecundity of giving fruit. Life reaches fulfilment only in giving itself. Life springs from an act of love - an act of love on the part of God primarily - and the meaning of life is to respond to this love. God has given us a vineyard and our task is to make it bear fruit.

Let us leave behind the selfish tenant of the vineyard and become the faithful servant

God has given us existence, and it is a beautiful thing to bring that existence to fruition, but we must never get discouraged. If we have failed up to now, and if God is going to give our vineyard to a new tenant, then let that new tenant be the new me! Let us leave behind the avaricious tenant and become the faithful servant. Let us leave behind the egocentric occupant who wished to kill the Son in order to become the owner. This is a highly appropriate analogy for our generation that has renounced Christianity in order to have "full possession" of its life. And the new tenant that takes over the vineyard is a wonderful analogy for every generation that converts; for the new man that is in every one of us; that noble person who knows how one must respond to life; who accepts that life involves responsibility. All of us have the means to bear fruit, even those of us who are sick in bed, even those who are dying. In every instant of our life we can say "Yes!" to the call of God; to give that little that we are in possession of. It doesn't matter if it is little, what matters is that it is ours.