Homily for 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the

27th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Oct. 4, 2020
Ps 80: 9, 12-16, 19-20
Matt 21: 33-43                                                                                   
Is 5: 1-7
Collect
Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.

“The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel” (Psalm Refrain).

We can’t miss the allegory in today’s Scriptures, that God’s chosen people is his vineyard.  God’s chosen people is Israel first, and then it’s the Christian people, the new Israel cultivated and saved by Jesus.

The prophet Isaiah describes how the Lord created Israel, his vineyard, and the Lord’s distress, his anger, when it produces “wild grapes” (5:2), not the good fruit he’d expected (5:4).

In Jesus’ parable, the problem is different:  the vineyard’s good fruit is denied to its owner, its lord—violently so.  Jesus highlights the tenants’ desire to be masters of the vineyard, and the terrible consequences for them, because the owner will enforce his rights.

Both Isaiah and Psalm 80 also speak of terrible consequences that have followed Israel’s “wildness,” their unfaithfulness.  Isaiah speaks of trampling, ruin, bloodshed, the outcry of the poor who have been the victims of brutal social practices—like those who today cry out for justice against oppressive policies.  The psalm speaks of broken walls and invasion by wild beasts.

If we live in a world ravaged by war, terrorism, persecution, racial, ethnic, and gender oppression, economic turmoil, pandemic, and natural disaster—it sure doesn’t sound like or feel like a vineyard the Lord is tenderly cultivating; rather, like a vineyard that has distressed the Lord, angered him, refused him his due share of the harvest.  So many of the Lord’s people—and of all his human creatures—have taken the attitude of the tenants in Jesus’ parable:  let us seize this vineyard and make it our own and deny the owner his rights.  And we see—and maybe we practice—greed, oppression, violence, prejudice of various stripes.

So how should we be thinking and acting?  The starting point has to be recognizing who owns the vineyard.  Whether we speak of society or of the Church, it is the Lord’s.  The earth and the entire universe belong to him, and not to us.  Our country belongs to the Lord, and from that premise follow our responsibilities as citizens—in the policies we support or oppose, in whom we’ll vote for this month by mail or early voting or next month in person.  Our bishops have provided us with guidelines and moral instruction for our consciences as we weigh issues and candidates in a document called “Faithful Citizenship,” which you can find online.  (Its full name is “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”)

And we belong to the Lord.  Our bodies are not our own, no matter what supporters of abortion say.  Our lives are not our own, no matter what supporters of euthanasia or assisted suicide say.  God created us to serve him—to return to him the vintage of his vineyard—and in this alone is our happiness.  He made us, as the old catechism taught us, “to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next world.”

St. Paul today gives us some positive guidance on how to serve the Lord:  “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God” (Phil 4:6).  Pray for what you need and for what others need.  “Your kindness should be known to all” (4:5).  Think about, and of course act upon, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious,” whatever is excellent and “worthy of praise” (4:8).

If we’ve been half-hearted or faint-hearted or unconvinced in our service to the Lord, it’s certainly not too late to recognize his lordship and to resolve to give him his share of the harvest of our lives.  The Collect of today’s Mass refers to “the abundance of [his] kindness,” which “surpasses the merits and the desires of those who entreat” him, viz., us.  And we pray for his mercy, regardless of what we might have done, said, or neglected in the past—“what conscience dreads,” in the words of the Collect.  We can, instead, make the psalmist’s prayer our own:  “We will no more withdraw from you; give us new life, and we will call upon your name.  O Lord, God of hosts, … if your face shine upon us, then  we shall be saved” (Ps 80:19-20).