TWENTY SEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

27TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR A
(Is 5:1-7; Phil 4:6-9; Math 21:33-43)

Theme: The garden of joy is in our hands and we have to make it grow with good fruits

Reflection:

- Last Sunday we have reflected that to attain the kingdom of God it is not enough to be sincere and authentic only in the beginning days of life of faith, but this attitude should continue until the last day of our life on earth. ‘Humiliation’ or ‘glorification’ belong to God and to his judgment; we should not be too fearful when the moments of humiliation/being less/ or of abasement come because ‘being in humility’ is a virtue according to Christian Faith; on the other way, we should not also be too proud and arrogant when the moments of ‘goodness’ or ‘glorification’ come because ‘being in glory’ is a reward according to Christian Faith and that which is offered by God himself for those who obey and listen to him even until death.
- The two modes of answering - either yes by mouth and no by action or no by mouth and later yes by action – the summary of the Gospel of last week - opens a new way, the third way of responding to the call and that is – to say ‘Yes’ and to stand by it until the end by Doing it. As we have already meditated, Christ himself is the greatest example and model for us for this type of attitude. This is the ‘mind’ and ‘heart’ of Jesus and in a word, this is the whole life of Jesus and, this is what called the ‘mentality’ of Jesus, and therefore, let us learn and live by it. We are called and invited by the parable of two sons to imbibe the same ‘mentality’ of Christ and preserve it until the last day of our life.
- And today, the twenty seventh Sunday of the Ordinary Time of the Liturgy, we have the readings that teach us to ‘prune well the garden of life and thus make it produce the good fruits’. We are both ‘the masters’ and ‘the servants’ of the vineyard. We are the masters insofar we are the guardians and the holders of the house of faith in and by which we are living and we are the servants insofar we are to take care and sweat for its well being and fructification and insofar we work for it day and night to keep it good condition.
- God alone is the author and the life-giver for his people, the vineyard he has chosen for himself; God alone is the ‘beginning and the end’ for our mastership and the servanthood; whether we be the masters of the house of faith that God has entrusted to us or we be the servants for the growth and goodness of the house, we are still In the Lord; thus all our call and life is in the Lord; In one word, as summarizes today’s Gospel, we receive everything from Him and we have to give back to him all that we have because ‘everything is His and we too are His Possession’.


First Reading:

- The vineyard of the Lord is the House of Israel:
o Vineyard is the ‘Thought’ and the ‘Deed’ of the Lord Yahweh:
 He has ‘thought’ in his mind and heart to have a group of people for him; he will that he should have for himself a faithful group among many infidels of the groups, and a group through which he can call all other groups into his ‘salvific action’.
 Once he has willed he has worked for it; the thought is being transformed into an action; the will has become the work; he has worked to make his people a chosen ones and it his ‘Action’, in the process of bringing his idea into realization, there are various steps: first he has elected one honest and faithful man, Abraham; then, he made Abraham and his family grow well; and then, he has provided them all that they wanted – which includes giving them the earthly possession and victories over the enemies. And thus finally, he called this people ‘His People’ and His vineyard.
o The depiction of the vineyard by the prophet Isaiah:
 This particular song is born from the ‘work’ and from the ‘workers’ of Jewish people when they are in the vineyard which is their main and principal occupation and there for them it is the ‘hymn of the vineyard’; this song from the prophet Isaiah the direction accusation that is made to the man who wanted to be only the ‘disinterested spectator’ who does not want to do anything but just to watch; the vineyard is not to be just watched but to be worked in; the prophet is very keen to condemn the one who neglects his ‘given work’ and stays lazy without reaping any fruits in the life of faith;
 The first stanza of the hymn (vv. 1-2): shows the love of the master expressed in his great work for the vineyard; he clears the ground from the rocks and from the thorns; he constructs the tower to safeguard it from the force of the enemies; in this way he works hard to ‘express’ his love for the vineyard; love is expressed in the action, in working for it; love is not a simple word but a committed action for the well-being of the lover; this is, therefore, a hymn of love of the master for his beloved which is here the chosen people of Israel;
 The second stanza of the hymn (vv.3-4): the expected response for the love expressed both by word and action is negative; the expected fruit for all the effort and fatigue put in is the production of the good fruit but on the contrary there comes out wild fruit which is not useful and not eatable and which doesn’t give any gain for the worker; therefore, there is a sorrowful tone of the master for his vineyard asking the inhabitants of his town to be the judges for all that he has done and for the vineyard which has produced bad fruit instead of good; the question of worry and anguish arise only from this result: what still I have to do that I did not do for my vineyard and why it has produced wild fruit when I was waiting for the good ones?
 The third stanza of the hymn (vv.5-6): ‘Now’ is the word with which this stanza starts and this is the word that stands out as the link between the previous one which is the ‘unfruitful fatigue’ and the following one which is the ‘consequence for not bearing the expected fruit’. The master has given up all the hope and he has decided to destroy it and make it a desert just because it has become ‘useless’ and it occupies unnecessarily the land;
 The final verse of the day (v.7): ‘It is we who are the vineyard of the Lord’. Whatever was there before and whatever has happened earlier is part of ‘the work done – fruit expected and – the unwanted result that is come out’. All this does not delete the truth that ‘It is WE who are the Vineyard of the Lord’. It shows that God still wills that we become pruned well and we become little more faithful to work in his vineyard of life and thus be ‘the fruit bearers’ of the life that He has offered for us by calling us and by saving us.
o Various Moments and Movements of the vineyard:
 First – the love of the Master for his vineyard and the amount of work he puts in for its betterment and for its being faithful;
 Second – Expectation of the good results and tasty fruit after the work is normal and conditional and the master is very eager to reap the good fruits just because he has done all that he could and there is nothing that he does not need to do anything further;
 Third – the harvest time has become the time of negation and the time of negligence; the fruit is wild and the reaping is useless; When the time came for the testing of the faith the ‘non-committed’ believer becomes unproductive and disinterested;
 Fourth – as the consequence he received the condemnation and being left in the desert – alone and without any hope of further salvation;
 Fifth – beyond all these happenings and above the merits of the servant stands the ‘love of the Bridegroom (God) for his bride (His People)’ and that gives the ‘continuous hope’ that we are still and always ‘the vineyard of the Lord’.

Second Reading:

- Our hearts and our thoughts are in Jesus Christ:
o St. Paul writing to the people of Philippines exclaims that we have to be always ‘grateful and thanksgiving’ to God with the prayer and with the supplications because He has kept us faithful and peaceful in His Son Jesus. This is the marvelous deed that He has fulfilled for us;
o It gives us an assurance to be at the peace of God because we do not need to lose heart and we do not need to lose our mind for any unwanted or unexpected situation and even for any unbearable suffering or difficulty, just because our mind (thought) and our heart (will) are fixed and protected in and through Christ Jesus;
- We are to be after the mind and heart of Jesus:
o Knowing the fact that God kept us safe and intact in Jesus His Son, we are to bear in mind and heart the mentality and the will of Jesus himself;
o This makes us to have in our minds all that is ‘true, noble, just, pure, lovable, honorable and that is laudable’ (v.8) and it is through these objectives that we have make our thoughts and thus we become worthy of the mentality (mind) of Jesus;
o Insofar we know all these things well and insofar we have ‘learnt, received, listened and seen’ and all that what is said in the previous verse, we have to follow them and we have to live them unconditionally and thus we become worthy of the love/the will (heart) of Jesus;
- This the only way through which the peace of the Lord is with us:
o It is God who does everything for us in Jesus Christ just because He is the Master of the vineyard, that is, of the life; we are only to be available for the ‘working of the Spirit of Jesus Christ’; He does all that has to be done and completed in us for the glory of his name and for the bearing of the good fruits; we just have to be ‘his hands’ and ‘his instruments’; Therefore, we are not to worry about anything; once we know this truth we are at peace and the Peace of God dwells in us.
o Without God we can do nothing is our belief as we are Christians; Without his knowledge nothing takes place in our life; the causes may differ but the consequence we certainly face in our life; God never wills that we are in anguish and we are in pain; we gives us the way to come out of all these circumstance; we have to only trust in him and leave everything to him; once we put all our trust in him leaving all our burdens for his care, we are at peace and the Peace of God dwells in us.

Gospel

- The biblical interpretation: the kingdom will be taken away from the Jews and will be given to the Ones who would accept Jesus’ message and produce good fruit:
o This parable is read in all the three synoptic gospels, Mathew, Mark and Luke and it is placed in view of the nearness of the Passion of Jesus. The vineyard referred here is already prefigured in Isaiah 5: 1-7, which stands out to be our first reading today. The vineyard is the handwork of the Lord and it is been surrounded by the care of the Lord and still it is presented as not producing the expected good fruit but wild fruits; therefore, it comes to be removed from those who were its ‘said-to-be-masters’, that is, the high priests, the scribes and the elders, and will be given to other groups who are ready to work on it with sincerity and commitment;
o The absence of the master (v. 33): the master gives his vineyard to the workers and goes to a long distance and it is seen here the ‘temporary absence’ of the master here. The absence of the Lord signifies here his ‘invisible presence’ among his people; from the part of people it is expected that even in the absence of the Lord they have to wait on him working thoroughly and without any negligence; it recalls the ‘continuous vigilance’ of the people (Mathew 24:42-51). The conduct of the faithful during this absence should be the same as in his presence.
o The maltreatment of the servants sent (vv. 34-36): the Jewish traditions always narrate that number of prophets were killed; we see it also in Heb 11:35-37; and Jesus also retakes this aspect when he says “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killed the prophets that are sent to you” (Math 23:37; Luke 13:34). Even the first martyr Stephen proclaims this: “who are the prophets whom your fathers have not persecuted? They killed those who were announcing the coming of the Just” (Acts 7:52).
o Beloved Son is sent finally and He too is killed (vv. 37-38): Mathew puts here ‘His Son’ whereas Mark and Luke are precise in referring Jesus as “Beloved Son” and “the Only Son” consecutively; this makes us remember the word and the testimony of the Father about his Son at his Baptism and at his Transfiguration (3:17; 17:5); after the different missions of the various prophets and servants there appears finally the Son and the letter to the Hebrews clarifies it (1:1-2) and this title ‘beloved Son’ indicates also the connection and unity between the Father and Jesus.
o They threw him outside the vineyard and killed him (v.39): it refers to death of Jesus outside Jerusalem; Jesus is thrown out of the city of Jerusalem and is put to death (27:32; John 19:17); Jesus who is the hirer of the Father is excluded from his property: “he has come to his people but his own did not accept him” (John 1:11 and Heb 13:12).
o I tell you that he will take it away from them and give it to those who make it produce fruits (v.43): “I tell you” is mainly of Mathew. From here Jesus gives the application of the parable: “God’s kingdom will pass from the Hebrews to a ‘new people’.” it was the same thing that Paul was preaching in the synagogue of the Antioch and it is the pagans who were rejoicing at the hearing of the message (Acts 13:44-49).

- Spiritual interpretation: the true Israel is the one who accepts and practices that has been listened and thus produce the good fruit in the vineyard of the life of faith:
o In this parable of wicked tenants we see the ‘story of salvation’ in its various stages that are dark at one time and luminous at other times;
o The wicked tenants here seem to be the leaders and the Hebrew people of that time; the servants instead are the prophets who are sent; the landowner is god himself;
o With the son of the owner the narration reaches its peak and its summit as the story of Israel has had with Christ its decisive turn.
o Jesus, after explaining the story of the Old Testament, now narrates his story and of kingdom of God;
o Jesus does not reveal that the destiny of his coming is the ultimate appeal to the conversion, but he reveals it above all to present the mystery of sin and hostility on which the judgment of God depends;
o The true Israel is the people who listen to the voice of the Lord and who believe in His Son and the salvation here seems to be ‘the acceptance of the Son’, the corner stone that was rejected (v.42) on which ‘every construction grows well ordained to be the holy temple for the Lord’ (Eph 2:21).

- Meaning for Today: We are the Masters and We are the Servants of the Vineyard: we guard the vineyard as the masters and at the same time we work for its growth and fruitfulness as its servants:
o Thomas Aquinas says that “Love does not permit God to remain alone”; therefore it is for love that the Lord has created the world and he had given to man so that he would make it grow, cultivate it and thus becomes like a landowner who has planted the vineyard and given it to the tenants as we see in the Gospel.
o God, out of love for the man and for the whole of creation, has been always participating fully in his creation; God (the Father) who has created everything with his two hands, the Word and the Spirit, as Irenius says, is always at work and is always present in this creation in every moment. He has not abandoned it not even for a single moment from the time of it existence; He is always at work in and through his creation as a sculpture who works with the raw and unrefined material which is full of imperfections. God, without cancelling the wrongs that man does in his use of freedom, brings a new design from them and gives it a perfection; all this is because he does not will that anything in his creation loses its way and identity;
o In the creation and because of the freedom of man, there are, many a time, mistakes and falls; there are the destructive forces which act contrary to what is good; and God fights and struggles with them as an artist who works with the weak material for bringing out all that is good possible from the bad.
o Man is not passive or indifferent in this divine act of modification and causing the growth but he is, above all, called to be the hero, the helping creator and collaborator of God. In this way man is the landowner and the guardian of the world; with his wisdom and intelligence he can know and use the laws of the nature and is in grade of serving himself with the marvelous riches of the creation and he has to use it per edifying and constructing a better world and building always a life that is comfortable, conditioned for his well being and for the well being of the others.
o But Man has become a Bad Tenant: as said above man has to be the custodian of the creation but instead he has become a bad tenant like in the Gospel of today; he has not safeguarded the world; he has not cultivated it as a garden which can give place for many; he has not utilized it according to the plans of God; he has, on the other hand, destructed it and corrupted it according to his own and selfish projects making it a place which has become fearful to live in and as the proverb affirms: “the forest goes before man and the desert follows him.”
o God has created or prepared the vineyard as in the Gospel and gave to the man so that he will, as his responsibility, keep it under his control, not to become its slave but to be its master who governs it and who edifies it according to the plans of God and not according his own; as seen in the Gospel the landowner has built one tower so that man could utilize these instruments to dig and to care the vineyard in accordance with the divine will.
o Finally, to conclude and to apply the meaning of the Gospel for us today, we are called to work in the vineyard of the Lord and we have to always keep in mind our position and our condition and we should also take care not to cross our limits by sinning in order to grab to ourselves what is God’s, as the wicked tenants have done in the gospel. God called us to be the custodians and the servants of the vineyard (of the world) so that he shares truly and concretely in the identity and in the image that God has made him – that is, sharing in the image and likeness of God himself.



Conclusion:

- Accepting the invitation to work in the vineyard is the first step and we have to be ready to face also the consequences and the requirements of the invitation: the sincere and commitment in working till the end;
- Producing the fruits: the land is given to us and in a word, the world is given to us. It is kept before us so that we cooperate in the creating work of God and make it grow and bear fruits; if the land does not give the fruit, even after the attention and care provided properly, the existence of the land is questioned and it would be and it will be made a desert; therefore, bearing the fruits or producing good fruits and expected fruits is the answer we have to give back to God.
- We have respect those who are sent by God, the prophets and servants of God who come in his name to teach and to preach and to guide them and we have to render our attention and our care for them; if we maltreat them as the tenants have done in the gospel then we will be thrown away from His house and our existence will be put to test;
- Therefore, let us till the ground using all the possible talents we are endowed with and make our life, the vineyard of the Lord, fruitful and successful in faith and in love. And in a word, the garden of joy is in our hands and, let us make it grow with good fruits.