TEXT:  The Holy Gospel According to Saint Matthew 21:33-43

(This past two weeks, I have been working in Pisgah, Iowa (a small farming community in the rural United States) with a brother hermit on the subject of "A Holy People of God: The Role of the Clergy and Laity in the Third Millennium."   This subject deals with the People of God who approach the Third Millennium…We are almost completed, as I write this homiletic reflection this evening in Iowa.  Our Lord and our Mother Mary have been liberally giving graces during this time.  For those who may be interested, this work will be published on line soon and available over the internet at no cost.  It has much to do with the Gospel reading today, October 3rd, 1999.  May God give us the grace to be obedient to the vocation that we have in Christ Jesus before God.)

JESUS spoke in parables.

The nation of Israel had forgotten the blessings and the graces of God.  They failed to see the Fruit of the Daughter of Jerusalem, Mary, whom we have come to know as our Mother.  Jesus said,

33 "Hear another parable. There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country.

It is in the prophet Hosea that we find the instructive words of the story of Israel.  The sins of the people of God were multiplied.  The people had strayed.  God sent a prophet after his own heart, Hosea, whose name means ("Salvation," like the name,  "Jesus," Yahweh is Salvation.)

Here in the readings today of Isaiah and the Psalm is the story that Jesus referred to, the Vine and the branches.  But, in Hosea’s Vineyard story the ground is hardened by sin, and it is God who graciously calls for the People of God to their vocation.  Hosea says,

1 1 Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased the more altars he built; as his country improved he improved his pillars.
2 Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The LORD will break down their altars, and destroy their pillars…
13 You have plowed iniquity, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your chariots and in the multitude of your warriors

People tend to trust themselves before they trust God.

People tend to trust sin before God.

BUT, What is the vocation we are called to?

Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain salvation upon you.  (Hosea 10:12, RSV)

This passage from Hosea the prophet CALLS US ALL to responsive love on our parts to the love of God given to us in Christ Jesus.

The world will pass away.  However, the word of the Lord will abide forever.

God calls us, the Church, to love God with the whole heart, mind, soul, strength, and one another.  That means in tangible ways that God has defined for us all through the examples of justice and righteous actions in the world where people live and where God is acting.

Like a field, like a vineyard, therefore, God calls us to break up the fallow (untilled) ground through the obedience of faith through the power of God, which is always available to all the People of God.

The point is driven home that our choice toward abandonment of this vocation from God, away from a life of holiness and righteousness, is the path of Satan and the fallen ones, and, we, like Israel, will be cut off, utterly.

We dare not abandon our calling from God.  Strong words, we might say?  Yes, indeed.  This Gospel is one that demands commitment of all that we are in Christ as new creations.  We are called into being to become all God has made us to be.  Again --

Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain salvation upon you.  (Hosea 10:12, RSV)

So, Jesus continues to call us, as he called through Hosea and I saiah and the Psalm we read.

Matthew’s Gospel says,

34 When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit;
35 and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.
36 Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them.
37 Afterward he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'
38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.'
39 And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

We might say, "Well, we would never do this?

But, let us consider.  Anything in our lives less than abandonment of sin and not following evil, is less than what God desires.

How do we treat our fellow servants?

How do we  look upon the Blessed Son of God?

Do we honor our Father and our Mother, as God has commanded?  Or, are the things of life, no matter what our state in life is, more important that following God no matter what it costs.

We are sons of God, children of God through faith in Christ Jesus and baptism, not hirelings (hired hands) that work in the field.

Many that were the children of Israel, did not see that Jesus was the real King of kings and Lord of lords.

Someday, every knee will bow, and every tongue will acknowledge Jesus Christ is Lord and God forever!

And,

40 When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"
41 They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons."

The Fruit of Mary’s womb will reward evil fruits from evil men.  They sowed the seeds of evil.  God did not.  God sows the good seed.  We, by the graces of God, are of the offspring of Mary, if we love Jesus, the Fruit (Seed) that God planted in the world.  (Cf. John 3:16-18)

42 Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?
43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it.

May we, like the good seed of Mary, be humbled under the Hand of God like her, and, thereby receive our reward for following God in our true vocation from God.

Deus et Sanctissima.