A Story of God's Vineyard

“My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He digged it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.”

- Isaiah 5:1, 2

The Holy Scriptures – Old and New Testaments together – give us an account of the relationship between God and His people. We read in the Bible of God’s great love for His children, and we read of the rebellious spirit which causes punishment to come upon them from time to time. It’s the story of our salvation, it’s the story of a people seeking God, trying to love Him, sometimes succeeding, and sometimes failing.

The prophecy of Isaiah tells a story which is really a tragedy – “My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill...” And so begins the account of the great love which God has for His people, and it sums up the whole drama of the relationship between God and His children. Isaiah paints a picture using this image of a vineyard planted with choice vines. A watchtower was built in the midst of it. A wine vat was put in it. And then the owner looked for it to yield a good harvest – everything was in place for it to produce good grapes, sweet, and abundant. But all He got from it was wild grapes – small, sour, an unusable crop.

The meaning of Isaiah’s story is clear. God had chosen a certain people to be the guardians of His promises, and this people was chosen to make God known to the whole world. God intended the Israelite nation to be representatives of His love and tenderness. But rather than producing the good fruits of faithfulness and peace, instead they produced sour fruit – unfaithfulness, jealousy, violence, even hatred. The end result would be their own destruction. The hedge surrounding them would be removed. The walls would be broken down and trampled. It would become a wasteland. It would be choked with weeds, and even the rain would not come upon it any more. This is how Isaiah told the story, through the inspiration of God Himself, as a warning to Israel.

In the Gospel according to St. Matthew (21:33-43), we hear the Incarnate God, our Lord Jesus Christ, telling a story – a parable – and He echoes what we heard from Isaiah. Our Lord tells of a vineyard, and the owner who planted it. He put a hedge around it. He dug a winepress, he built a tower. When our Lord told this already-familiar story to the chief priests and the elders of the Jews, they knew the reference He was making. They knew He was telling them that they were being unfaithful to God. Just as the tenants wanted to make the vineyard into their own, disregarding the fact that it already had an owner, our Lord was telling the Jewish leaders that they were using the law and prophets, not to give glory to God, but rather to bolster their own personal authority, and so were hiding God’s truth and love from others.

Jesus was being prophetic here. Just as happened in His parable, the chief priests had not only rejected the message of the prophets in the past, but they would also kill the Son – namely, Jesus Himself. And His warning to them was forthright. “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it.”

One of the things we know about Christ’s parables is that they have a universal application. Although He was speaking to the chief priests and elders of Israel, His message is for us, too. And it’s a serious message. Namely, that we are to listen to God’s truth as it comes to us through those who are appointed to bring it – and the source of the truth is Jesus Christ Himself. We are to use what our Lord has revealed to us to produce the fruits of the vineyard. We’re to use it to build up God’s kingdom, and to spread the good news of His love and salvation to the whole world.

This was what Israel had been chosen to do, and now we – as the New Israel – have been chosen for the same task. We are to devote our minds and our wills and our energy to the building up of God’s kingdom, and not looking for any return for ourselves. The job we have is pretty simple in its outline, but it’s not easy. Too often we fall into a selfish practice of our faith: “God, I want...God, I need...God please do this for me...” It’s an ancient temptation. We see it through the prophecies of Isaiah and the other great prophets; we see it in the chief priests and elders of the Jews to whom our Lord was speaking. It’s the temptation to try a fashion the Kingdom of God as our own personal domain, focusing our attention on what we want, on what we feel is important. We sometimes try, like the unworthy tenants in the Gospel story, to take the Lord’s vineyard for ourselves, serving ourselves under the guise of serving the truth.

How do we become faithful tenants of God’s vineyard? St. Paul gives us some guidance in his epistle to the Philippians (4:6-9). “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things...” We should think: are those the ingredients in my conversations? Do people read those things in my own heart? And also he tells us, “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made know to God.” This is the “bottom line” – that we have to seek out those things that are of God, and those things only, and act upon them, making them the basis of our prayer to God.

There is no room for selfishness in God’s kingdom. There is no room for personal gain in God’s kingdom. There is no room for “picking and choosing” in God’s kingdom. There is but one thing for us to do: to put ourselves in God’s care, and His care alone, so that He can plant His kingdom in us. And when we allow God to plant His Word in us – with all of the grace which flows from the Sacraments and from our life of prayer – He’ll have a great harvest. It will be a harvest of salvation for the world, the harvest of a people who want to serve God and His truth by living in accordance with His Will. This is the harvest that can fix broken lives, and that can heal broken families, and that can renew broken hearts.

Are things not as we hoped they would be in our own lives? The answer to that is for us to live in sync with God’s revealed truth. This is the paradox of the Gospel: that we’re free to be all that we should be, only when we’re obedient to God. It’s in obedience that we find freedom. We can have new life only insofar as our old lives of selfishness and self-centeredness are put aside. We’re not the owners of this vineyard; we are tenants. 

One of the fundamental spiritual mistakes we make is to think that we own the world. We are tenants, entrusted with the responsibility of caring for it, but everything that we have, everything we are, is on loan, and if we put ourselves at the center, we put our tenancy in jeopardy. So this is the great question for us today: "how am I using the gifts that God gave me for God's purposes? My money? My time? My talents? My creativity? My relationships?" It all has to be for God.

May we unite ourselves so completely with Christ that His death will bring us life, and that the creatures of bread and wine, transubstantiated at the Mass, might make us into a new creation; namely, men and women who desire only to love and serve the Lord.

The Transitus of St. Francis

Because it falls on a Sunday this year, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi will not be celebrated liturgically. Certainly many of us will remember this beloved saint with various devotions, but the liturgy proper to the Sunday will take precedence.

One of the beautiful traditions that will no doubt be kept by Franciscans and others throughout the world is the Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi, observed on the evening of October 3. It commemorates the saint’s passing from this earthly life into eternal life with God. The word Transitus means “passing over,” expressing the Christian hope that death is not an end, but a passage into the fullness of life in Christ.

Francis approached his death with the same simplicity and trust that had characterized his entire vocation. Having embraced poverty, humility, and the Gospel, he desired above all to conform himself to Christ. As his earthly life drew to its close, Francis asked to be placed upon the bare earth, returning to the simplicity he had loved throughout his life.

He welcomed death as “Sister Death,” whom he had already praised in his Canticle of the Creatures. Before his death, Francis also gave his final blessing as a lasting sign of his love and spiritual fatherhood.

The Transitus invites us to contemplate our own mortality with Christian hope. Like St. Francis, we are called to live each day turned toward Christ, trusting that our final passage will lead us into the eternal joy of God’s presence.

This is a brief account of his final hours:

“On the eve of his death, the saint, in imitation of his Divine Master, had bread brought to him and broken. This he distributed among those present, asking God’s blessing upon Bernard of Quintaville, his first companion, and Elias, his vicar, as well as all the others in order. “I have done my part,” he said next, “may Christ teach you to do yours.” Then wishing to give a last token of detachment and to show he no longer had anything in common with the world, Francis removed his poor habit and lay down on the bare ground, covered with a borrowed cloth, rejoicing that he was able to keep faith with his Lady Poverty to the end. After a while he asked to have read to him the Passion according to St. John, and then in faltering tones he himself intoned Psalm cxli. At the concluding verse, ‘Bring my soul out of prison’, Francis was led away from earth by ‘Sister Death’, in whose praise he had shortly before added a new strophe to his ‘Canticle of the Sun’.”

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ALLELUIA, Alleluia. Francis, poor and humble, enters heaven rich and is welcomed with celestial hymns. Alleluia.

Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

O God, you granted our blessed Father Francis the reward of everlasting joy: grant that we, who celebrate the memory of his death, may at last come to the same eternal joy; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Holy Guardian Angels

God shows His love to us in many ways, and one of the most comforting and constant expressions of this is that He entrusts each of us to a particular angel, who is our guide and our guardian.  Guardian angels do battle for us and with us. They are dedicated to the work of doing everything possible to bring us to God.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that "the existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls 'angels' is a truth of faith” (n. 328), and it goes on to say (n. 336) "Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life." Our Lord Himself tells us, "See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father" (Matthew 18:10).

From the first instant of our existence until our death, we are surrounded by the protection and intercession of angels, particularly our guardian angel who remains beside each one of us and who stands as protector and shepherd leading us to life with God. We should ask our guardian angel for help, and when we are praying for others, we can ask our guardian angel to cooperate with the guardian angel of another person, to keep them safe and to guide them.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in writing to his spiritual sons (and equally applicable to all of us) says this:

“Be alert in your every action as one should be who is accompanied by angels in all your ways, for that mission has been enjoined upon them. In whatever lodging, in whatever nook or corner you may find yourself, cherish a reverence for your guardian angel. In his presence do not dare to do anything you would not do in mine. Or do you doubt his presence because you do not see him? Would it really help if you did hear him, or touch him, or smell him? Remember, there are realities whose existence has not been proven by mere sight. Brethren, we will love God's angels with a most affectionate love; for they will be our heavenly co-heirs some day, these spirits who now are sent by the Father to be our protectors and our guides. With such bodyguards, what are we to fear? They can neither be subdued nor deceived; nor is there any possibility at all that they should go astray who are to guard us in all our ways. They are trustworthy, they are intelligent, they are strong — why, then, do we tremble? We need only to follow them, remain close to them, and we will dwell in the protection of the Most High God. So as often as you sense the approach of any grave temptation or some crushing sorrow hangs over you, invoke your protector, your leader, your helper in every situation. Call out to him and say: Lord, save us, we are perishing.”

O GOD, who in thine ineffable providence dost vouchsafe to send thy holy Angels to guard us: grant, of thy bountiful goodness; that we thy humble servants may continue in safety under their protection, and hereafter rejoice in their abiding fellowship; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.