TENANTS MADE INHERITORS IN THE SON

SUNDAY, TWENTY SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIMEE

Isa 5:1-7; Ps 80:9,12-16,19-20; Phil 4:6-9; Mt 21:33-43

Gifts Beyond Our Prayer

God made us for a lofty end: to be God’s temple forever. This original intention of God forms the foundation of our awareness, our knowing, loving, and doing. We had one opportunity to fix our gaze on the Eternal Word of God forever, for God to guide us to the realisation of the divine goal. But we missed the opportunity in our first parents, Adam and Eve, when they followed the temptation of the devil instead of keeping the word that God spoke to them. Since our nature was corrupted in Adam and Eve, we have begun to yearn for what we do not know. Our ignorance of what is truly good for us makes us forage in the world of creatures because we lack the light of God's word. Saint Paul explained that God prepared what has never entered the human mind or heart for those who love him. Saint Augustine further clarified that what God prepared cannot enter the human mind or heart because human hearts and minds will enter into it. God made us to be his dwelling place, but that is when we are completely transformed into his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. But before then, we are unlike him because we do not know God in Jesus Christ.

Saint Paul used this reasoning to conclude that the Law of God was never meant to be obeyed by mere unaided mortals. So, the purpose of the Law was never to make us just without Christ or faith in him. The purpose of the Law was to make us realise how weak we are without the grace of Jesus Christ, and how sinful sin really is as disobedience to God’s will. Confer Rom 3:20, 8:3. Today’s readings use the analogy of a vineyard to teach us this lesson. The prophet Isaiah calls the house of Israel the vineyard of the Lord that refused to produce good grapes and wine, but produced sour grapes after all that the Lord did for them. “My friend has a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug the soil, cleared it of stones and planted choice vines on it. In the middle he built a tower, he dug a press there too. He expected it to yield grapes, but sour grapes were all that it gave.” What caused Israel to produce sour grapes? Why do we sin consistently and not produce good fruit proportionate to the graces we have received? The reason is exactly what we have explained above. We try to be good without God. We think that God desires us to produce good fruit on our own. God wants to use us, our cooperation, to produce good fruit in and with us. God desires our submission to his holy will.

All the treatment he gives us is to bring us to be fruitful with him, and not without him; for our fruitfulness is of God’s making. The trials are for this purpose. “Very well, I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge for it to be grazed on, and knock down its wall for it to be trampled on. I will lay it waste, unpruned, undug; overgrown by the briar and the thorn.” God works in us to make us fruitful, to be like his Son Jesus Christ. When he gave Israel harsh treatment as he threatened, they turned around to recognise that all their fruitfulness comes from him. “God of hosts, turn again, we implore, look down from heaven and see. Visit this vine and protect it, the vine your right hand has planted.” This repentance and recognition of who God is for us is central to our spiritual growth and development. Thus, Saint Paul encouraged it in the Philippians. “There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.” God wants all of us to be in Jesus Christ, and Christ be in each of us.

By the Incarnation of the Son of God, our human nature is reappropriated by God for the purpose for which he made it. We are his vineyard, which his Son cultivates in collaboration with us. The cultivation is to produce his Son in each of us. Thus, to refuse to admit his Son and work with him in our interior is to usurp what is rightfully God’s, the inheritance of his beloved Son. “Listen to another parable. There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard; he fenced it round, dug a winepress in it and built a tower; then he leased it to tenants and went abroad. When vintage time drew near he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his servants, thrashed one, killed another, and stoned a third.” Our good reception of the Son would transform us and enhance our production of heavenly fruit. It is through his Son, the Eternal Word, that God prunes us to bear heavenly fruit that would last forever to the glory of God. We, as tenants, are mostly shortsighted and blind to the fact that we are not just tenants; we are also inheritors of the vineyard, but with the Son, and not without him. We are not just attendants to the bridegroom, but also the bride of the Groom. If we are unfaithful as tenants, God will not make us coinheritors with his Son. “I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, who in the abundance of your kindness surpass the merits and the desires of those who entreat you, pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.