“It’s such a busy time.” How often do we hear this? How often do we say this? Especially as the school year gets underway, Fall sports gear up, and the prospect of Christmas preparations loom on the horizon, everyone is talking about how busy they are. In our society, it’s something of a badge of honor. The busier you are, the more “swamped” you perceive yourself to be, the more important and respected you must be. If your children are super busy, you must be getting it right as a parent. Not so, Jesus would tell us. Not so.
The love command is the guts of Catholic morality. Church practices and rules are there to help us avoid everything that is opposed to the “love command.” Sin in our lives is when we do not live up to our baptismal commitment, to our discipleship witness of loving God and our neighbor. In the Gospel account, the Pharisees understanding of what truth is could be found only in a multitude of laws. The Gospel affirms the witness of a God of love and a God of hope. The joy of the Gospel is discovered when we share the merciful love of Jesus with one another.
This coming week, thousands of Halloween costumes will be bought and made across the United States in anticipation of the big night a week from Tuesday. There will be ghosts and witches and pirates. An enormous amount of time, talent and treasure will be expended to pretend for a few hours to be something on the outside that we are not in the inside. In contrast to Halloween, Jesus is trying to show us how important it is to witness on the outside the mystery of the love of Christ that is within us. In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. Their strategy was to get Jesus to talk about taxes. That usually is a no-win situation. Taxes are a timeless human issue. So they said to Jesus: “Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay tax to Caesar or not?”
In today’s gospel parable, the kingdom of God is compared to a wedding feast. Today’s Gospel contains two of the parables of Jesus: the parable of the wedding feast and the parable of the man without an appropriate wedding garment. We like the first parable better. In the first parable, the wedding banquet has been prepared but those invited found excuses not to come. What began as a select guest list for this marriage celebration becomes an indiscriminate one. The invited guests had other priorities. Those who ae not aware of their spiritual poverty, who do not hunger and thirst for a new world will never enter the Kingdom of God. Then the king gave a second set of instructions to: “Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” The banquet message is one of hospitality and the universality of the reign of God. All are welcome.
Today’s Scripture readings use the imagery of a vineyard to describe God’s love for us. The prophet Isaiah in the first Scripture reading uses a love ballad to describe his friend’s song concerning his vineyard. Then Isaiah says the house of Israel is God’s vineyard. In the Gospel parable the vineyard is the reign of God that is to be found within us. The vineyard of the Lord is to be found in our own hearts. God goes to great lengths to prepare wondrous blessings for the vineyard. We are nurtured by God’s Word, fed at God’s table, helped by the commandment of love. All we need do is to let God tend us and bring us to produce good fruit. We are invited in this celebration of the Eucharist to invite Christ into the vineyard of our own heart and to open our hearts and our minds to his loving presence.
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to contemplate how I will return God’s gift of time to me, along with several others in the parish, at a training conference for ChristLife, a Catholic ministry of evangelization. It provides the opportunity for all of us to come together for an initial program called Discovering Christ and to ponder the meaning of life, the role of the Holy Spirit, and the relationship Jesus desires to have with each of us. I traveled to the Diocese of Steubenville with Eric Heinen, Jeanne Mooney, Mike Nesbitt, Claudia Reyda, and Ned Sayegh.
Today’s Scripture readings use the imagery of a vineyard to describe God’s love for us. The prophet Isaiah in the first Scripture reading uses a love ballad to describe his friend’s song concerning his vineyard. Then Isaiah says the house of Israel is God’s vineyard. In the Gospel parable the vineyard is the reign of God that is to be found within us. The vineyard of the Lord is to be found in our own hearts. God goes to great lengths to prepare wondrous blessings for the vineyard. We are nurtured by God’s Word, fed at God’s table, helped by the commandment of love. All we need do is to let God tend us and bring us to produce good fruit. We are invited in this celebration of the Eucharist to invite Christ into the vineyard of our own heart and to open our hearts and our minds to his loving presence.
I grew up in the Finger Lakes, the heart of wine country. In late summer, the vines are heavy with dense clusters of grapes. On the drive down to visit family, I see vineyards on both sides of the road, and every winery packed with people enjoying the fruits of those vines. Can you imagine a vineyard that didn’t share its fruit? As disciples building up God’s “vineyard”, we are asked to share the fruits of our relationship with God with others in our family, in our community, and in our world.