TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY
IN ORDINARY TIME
7-8 October 2023 - St. Lambert Parish
Is 5:1-7
Phil 4:6-9
Mt
21:33-43
Praised be Jesus Christ!
“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.”
This last
sentence from today’s Gospel just has to hold our attention; these words should
really hold us bound. They are both an exhortation to all to behave rightly and
a condemnation of some who have remained stubbornly unfaithful to the Divine Will.
“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.” Jesus through His Church is
admonishing us as Catholics to get with the program, to be faithful to the Gospel.
This Sunday’s
theme could not be stated clearer than it is in the assigned scriptures. Both
our first reading from the Prophet Isaiah and Matthew’s Gospel refer to
vineyards, to farm production, to the yield of grapes expected in due time given
all the effort invested before and over the course of the growing season. Isaiah
in the first reading talks about the tragedy of having planted choice vines
which sadly yield wild grapes, not good either for eating or for making decent
wine.
I can identify
with this grape production/vineyard imagery as last spring I ordered a rhubarb
root online to replace some that had rotted out in the South Dakota clay on the
south side of my house (rhubarb likes it a bit dryer). Maybe a week after I
planted the root which came in the mail, I got an apology from the company and
a refund. Somehow, they had made a mistake and sent me Chinese rhubarb, which
is an ornamental plant, intended to produce fragrant flowers but no good for
rhubarb sauce, pie or crisp. As in the account from the prophet, once the
Chinese rhubarb had come up and leafed out, I could see the difference and dug
it up and threw it away. Fragrant flowers was not what I had ordered online. No
reasonable person with a taste for rhubarb would fault me for throwing the
thing away. It is not what I had expected, and the seed company had apologized beforehand
for their mistake.
Isaiah explains
the lesson in these words: “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house
of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished plant; he looked for judgment,
but see, bloodshed! For justice, but hark, the outcry!” The prophet
condemned Israel for not bearing the desired fruit, for not behaving as God’s
People should, for not producing the desired fruit of justice and peace.
The Gospel has a different focus, not
on bad plants but on the tenant farmers who not only refused the owner of the
vineyard his due, but laid hands on his servants and even killed his son, the
heir to the property, thinking to make the vineyard their own by violence.
“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.”
My guess is that
even the thickest headed people today would understand the point of our parable
and of our prophecy. Even so given the woke state of affairs which prevails in society,
they might refuse to apply it in their own lives. Too often people out there in
the world throw fits when they are called to render account for their failure
to observe God’s law, to obey His commands.
It is an odd
state of affairs, but not only people who have never been catechized, who do
not know their faith, but a lot of those who should know better refuse to
submit to Christ. They refuse to live by God’s law. They fail to produce good
fruit or like the wicked tenants they commit acts of aggression against the
servants of the living God.
Some of those
people are like the wild grapes or the Chinese rhubarb, which should never have
been, given their Baptism and upbringing in the Catholic Faith, 12 years of
Catholic schooling and maybe even having frequented a so-called Catholic
institute of higher learning. No mercy! Root them out! Let them go!
That is not to say that the Lord is
without mercy. We can always find consolation in the parable of the fig tree
which bears no fruit and which because of the servant's intercession with the
master gains one more year of cultivation and fertilizer before it should be
cut down. Like good servants we owe our prayers and supplications to all who
have been unfaithful to the promises of their Baptism. That the Lord in His
love and mercy would call them back to the right path. Parents, grandparents, brothers,
and sisters especially owe them our sincere acts of penance for their
conversion and eternal salvation.
The same is true
for all those who were not properly raised in the faith, who were exposed to
grave scandal as children or adolescents even sometimes in our Catholic
schools. We owe them our best efforts at winning their recovery. But this does
not mean that we should approve their behavior as wild grapes, good for
nothing, or as Chinese rhubarb, fit neither for a pie, nor for a crisp, nor even
for rhubarb sauce, no matter how much sugar and cinnamon you throw into the
pot. Abortion never gets a pass, nor generally does in vitro fertilization or surrogacy.
People living in adultery, same-sex unions, or extra-marital relationships
should not approach to receive Holy Communion.
When we are truly
sorry and able to make a good confession, we should never delay approaching the
Sacrament of Penance. Wild grapes and Chinese rhubarb have no place in the Lord’s Garden. Fear of offending the Lord of Life demands that we bend to His Will and
find life in Him for ourselves and for all those dear to us. “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.”
Praised be Jesus
Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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