Jesus said, hear another parable.
There was a householder who planted the vineyard, and set a hedge around it and dug a winepress
in it, and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country.
When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit,
and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.
Again he sent other servants more than the first, and they did the same to them.
Afterward, he sent his son to them, saying,
They will respect my son.
But when the tenants saw the sun, they said to themselves,
This is the heir, come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.
And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him.
When, therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?
They said to him,
He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him the fruits in their seasons.
Jesus said to them,
Have you never read in the Scriptures,
the very stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone?
This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a
nation producing the fruits of it.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
In all of the parables that Jesus speaks in the Holy Gospel,
he's teaching us about the relationship that exists between man and God.
And his teaching is a living word.
It's not something stuck in the past.
It is living.
It's effective for us today.
Of course, there is an historical aspect of the parable
that Jesus speaks in this gospel I just read to you.
And here is the history of it.
Many years ago, God entered into a covenant relationship with his people Israel, beginning with Abraham and his descendants.
He gave them a law, the Ten Commandments, and many graces and blessings, and he worked powerful, amazing miracles in their midst.
Over time, however, many of them began to manifest in their hearts what began in the
hearts of Adam and Eve, the dark reality of sin.
They were tricked by the devil himself, and they began to believe that God's law, His
commandments, were not good for them.
They began to believe that they could find their greatness outside of carrying out the
will of God who created them.
They decided to do their own will, and not the will of God, not the will of the Lord.
And so God, in His love for them, would send prophets.
He would send them a prophet to guide them out of the darkness of error and sin and lead them into the light of truth.
Many, however, would not listen to the prophet.
They would reject the prophet, not so much because they did not like the prophet,
but they did not like the word of the Lord that the prophet spoke.
They would do anything they could to silence the word of the Lord.
God, in His Divine Mercy, would send them more prophets, more numerous than in the beginning,
and still they would not listen.
They wanted to bring to themselves all of the false prophets and listen to their comfortable
teachings because the true prophets who spoke the word of the Lord spoke words that were
uncomfortable that challenged their way of living.
They rejected these prophets and would kill some of them.
afterward he sent his son saying they will respect my son now when Jesus spoke
this parable he knew he was going to be crucified because he's omniscient he
knows everything and he was referring to himself as the one whom the father sent
Afterward, after all the prophets, after the final prophet, St. John the Baptist, the father sent his son, thinking,
They will respect my son.
But what happens in the parable happened to Jesus. They cast him out and killed him.
For Jesus, they did this in crucifixion.
In this parable, after we examine the history of the parable, what do we see in the hearts
of the men and women who reject the law of God and ultimately reject His Son, the Lord
Jesus?
What we see is this, their blind obedience to this saying, I will do whatever I want.
I will do whatever I want. They are blindly obedient to this. I will do
whatever I want. They don't think about what that means. They blindly follow that
teaching on their impulse.
No one shall tell me what to believe or how to live.
No one shall tell me what is good and evil, not even the Son of God.
That's the historical reality of this parable.
But can this happen today?
Can what happened in this parable manifest itself in our lives?
Is this parable not also a warning to us?
The great apostle of St. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, gives us a teaching on how we
are to think if we want to live as faithful members of the Vineyard of the Lord. In his
letter he says, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, just, pure, lovely and gracious,
think about these things.
What is true honorable just pure lovely and gracious if we think about these things
Then the God of peace will be near to us. He will be with us
But if not
Our hearts will be closed
closed off from the presence of God
If we don't think about these things that are true, honorable, just, pure and lovely
and gracious, it is as if we cast Christ out of our hearts and do not experience His grace.
Today brothers and sisters, we do not have to look too far or too hard to find many things
opposing what St. Paul exhorts us to have in our minds and our hearts.
Whatever is true,
Well, we see many people today who lie all the time.
They lie in their relationships.
They lie in their work, in their politics, in their business.
Whatever is just.
Today, we have great manifestations of injustice, where the dignity of the human person is trampled
underfoot, where the powerful oppress the weak. And let me tell you that in the United States of America,
The most severe manifestation of the powerful oppressing the weak is the powerful oppressing
the unborn in abortion. There's no greater injustice among men than abortion.
Whatever is honorable, today we have many in the entertainment industry being held
up as heroes, but their lives are not lives we want anyone to emulate. Whatever
is pure, and we witness immodesty of all kinds, unchastity of all kinds, the plague
of pornography which enslaves millions of people.
and so on. On and on we have examples of things that if we follow go against what
is necessary to be faithful members of the Vineyard of the Lord.
There is no shortage of these things that go against the ways of the Lord of the vineyard.
And what is the lesson for us?
It's this.
You and I, we, must live as men and women who really love the Lord our God.
We must seek not our own will, but the will of God our Father.
We must cultivate in our hearts and minds these things which define the lives of the
saints, beginning with worshipping God.
The warning, though, in this parable is very stark, very stark. Think about this.
Some people who met various prophets sent by God, who heard them teach, some people
who saw Jesus, who witnessed His great power, His miracles, heard His teaching,
rejected him. They rejected the prophets that they saw, they rejected Jesus whom
they saw work so many miracles and teach so powerfully and so truthfully. That
rejection indicates that even though they were physically near to Christ,
their hearts and minds were far from him, very far.
That's the warning for us. It's not enough for us to come to church, to come to Mass.
I say this of myself, it's not enough for me to become a priest. My priesthood does
not guarantee that I'll make it to heaven. It doesn't. It doesn't guarantee that I will
not end up in hell for all eternity. We must be humble before the Lord of the vineyard.
That's what we must do.
We must be humble before the Lord of the vineyard, and let him be the Lord of our hearts, of
our minds, of our actions, and of our very lives.
Dear brothers and sisters, in this way and with the power of God, amen.
help of the sacraments of the church we will be good servants of the Lord and
come to the everlasting vineyard in the kingdom of heaven where Christ is seated
at the right hand of the Father. God bless you.