27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) October 5, 2008

Scripture Readings
First Isaiah 5:1-7
Second Philippians 4:6-9
Gospel Matthew 21:33-43

Prepared by: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• The expectation of the Lord regarding his “vineyard”
• Anxiety vs. the peace of God
• God’s offer of himself to us

2. Exegetical Notes
• The song of the vineyard: Isaiah 5:1-7 – “There is a play on words here that escapes most of
our translations. God looked for ‘judgment’ (mispat) and all he found was ‘bloodshed’
(mispah), for ‘justice’ and he found an ‘outcry.’ Mispat was basically a judgment, the revealed
will of God covering that totality of man’s duties, to God, to man, and to himself…. ‘Justice’
meant both the doing of one’s duty and the state of being resulting from doing that duty”
(JBC).
• “Then the peace of God…will guard your hearts and minds” – “The peace that God gives is
personified; like a sentinel it will stand guard over the hearts and minds of Christians” (J.
Fitzmyer).
• “The kingdom of God will be…given to a people that will produce its fruit” – “The fruit is a
Matthean metaphor for right living or obedience to God’s law” (D.L. Turner); “‘Fruits’ in
Matthew stands for ‘good works’…. The householder is God asking for complete
allegiance…. In Matthew and in other New Testament texts, ‘fruit’ is a metaphor for
repentance, conversion, and actions that manifest such conversion…. True discipleship
consists…in having fruit when the critical time comes” (J.R. Donahue).

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• 755 The Church is a cultivated field, the tillage of God. On that land the ancient olive tree
grows whose holy roots were the prophets and in which the reconciliation of Jews and
Gentiles has been brought about and will be brought about again. That land, like a choice
 vineyard, has been planted by the heavenly cultivator. Yet the true vine is Christ who gives
life and fruitfulness to the branches, that is, to us, who through the Church remain in Christ,
without whom we can do nothing.
• 2547 Abandonment to the providence of the Father in heaven frees us from anxiety about
tomorrow. Trust in God is a preparation for the blessedness of the poor.
• 2088 The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and
vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning
against faith: …. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming
objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately
cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness.
• 1129 The Spirit heals and transforms those who receive him by conforming them to the Son
of God. The fruit of the sacramental life is that the Spirit of adoption makes the faithful
partakers in the divine nature by uniting them in a living union with the only Son, the Savior.
• 1134 The fruit of sacramental life is both personal and ecclesial. For every one of the faithful
on the one hand, this fruit is life for God in Christ Jesus; for the Church, on the other, it is an
increase in charity and in her mission of witness.
• 2305 Earthly peace is the image and fruit of the peace of Christ, the messianic "Prince of
Peace." By the blood of his Cross, "in his own person he killed the hostility," he reconciled
men with God and made his Church the sacrament of the unity of the human race and of its
union with God. "He is our peace." He has declared: "Blessed are the peacemakers."

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

• St. Ephrem the Syrian: “Let the vine give thanks to our Lord, the true vineyard.”
• Marius Victorinus: “Do not be anxious about anything. This means: Do not be concerned for
yourselves. Do not give unnecessary thought to or be anxious about the world or worldly
things. For all that is needful for you in this life God provides.”
• St. John Chrysostom: “How can one make petitions for the future without a thankful
acknowledgment of past things? So one ought to give thanks for everything, even what
seems grievous. That is the mark of one who is truly thankful. Grief comes out of the
circumstances with their demands. Thanksgiving comes from a soul that has true insight and
a strong affection for God.”
• St. John Chrysostom: “The peace that surpasses all understanding: When we should be a
peace with enemies, with the unrighteous, with those who display contentiousness and
hostility toward us.”
• St. John Chrysostom: “This parable suggests many things: God’s providence had been at
work toward them from the outset; their disposition was murderous from the beginning;
nothing had been neglected of whatever pertained to an attentive care for them.”
• St. John Chrysostom: “The landowner himself did the work the tenants should have done. It
was he who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it and
built a tower. He left little for them to do. All they had to do was take care of what was there
and to preserve what was given to them.”
• Epiphanius the Latin: “The tower constructed in the middle of the vineyard is our Lord
himself, who appeared like a strong tower in the midst of the holy Church through the Virgin.
Because of his presence, all the saints and martyrs are protected with spiritual weapons from
their most wicked enemy, who is the devil.”
• Origen: “The hedge which God set round his people was his own Providence.”
• St. Ambrose: “He dug around it when God had freed it from the burden of earthly anxieties.
For nothing burdens the mind more than exaggerated solicitude for the world and desire
either for wealth or for power.”
• St. Basil the Great: “The one who has deemed desire for small glory of greatest contempt
has been dug around and liberated from the vain burden of the spirit of the world.”
• St. Margaret Mary Alocoque: “Anxiety withdraws the soul from God.”
• St. Francis de Sales wrote: “With the single exception of sin, anxiety is the greatest evil that
can happen to a soul.”
• Louis Lavelle: “Anxiety is the opposite of purity. Anxiety unfailingly creates a division in the
soul.”
• Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Jesus must experience inwardly (without distancing himself
from it) everything that alienated humanity in sin and anti-divine acts, so that he was literally
‘made to be sin’ (2 Cor 5:21) for us. He had already achieved the total devotion to the Father
in his entire life, but in death he achieved this total devotion within our anxiety, our inability,
and our insurmountable unwillingness. And he did this not for himself, but for us so that in the
same act he transferred his entire achievement to us eucharistically. Through the perfect
self-surrender of human nature in Christ’s death (which seizes hold of our dying and conveys
it to perfection) the powers of love and of achievement in our nature become free—powers
that will unfold in God’s eternity.”
• Bl. Charles de Foucauld: “Real faith, faith…inspires all one’s actions, faith in the supernatural
which strips the world of its mask and reveals God in all things; which abolishes the notion of
‘impossible,’ and empties the words ‘anxiety,’ ‘danger,’ and ‘fear’ of their meaning; which
gives life calm, peace, deep joy, like a child holding its mother’s hand; which detaches the
soul so completely from earthly things by showing up their total lack of importance and their
childishness.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• St. Isaac Jogues as an example of the obedient son sent by the landowner to murderous
tenants: In 1636 he was sent to Quebec, Canada, as a missionary to the Huron Indians. He
was tortured (some of his fingers were burnt or bitten off) and then imprisoned by the
Iroquois in 1642. The Dutch at Fort Orange (Albany, New York) rescued him, and he
returned to France in 1643. The following spring, Isaac Jogues was entrusted with a peace
mission to his torturers, and so he left France to return to Canada. On September 24, 1646,
en route to Ossernenon (Auriesville, New York) Isaac was captured by a Mohawk war party.
On October 18, 1646 his captors tomahawked and beheaded him. During his years in the
New World he converted many Hurons.
6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI
• “The human person is to learn to live by God, for then he really lives, then he has eternal life,
for God is eternal. Anyone who lives with him and in dependence on him is already in that
real life which reaches out beyond death. Living in dependence on God means not being
one’s own master, not wanting to take charge of the world oneself; it means saying good-bye
to the dream of autonomy and of being one’s own boss, it means recognizing that we cannot
do it on our own and learning to accept our life day by day from his hands, without anxiety
and full of confidence.”
• “God created a vineyard for himself—this is an image of the history of love for humanity, of
his love for Israel which he chose. God instilled in men and women, created in his image, the
capacity for love, hence also the capacity for loving him, their Creator. With the Prophet
Isaiah’s canticle of love God wants to speak to the hearts of his people—and to each one of
us. ‘I have created you in my image and likeness,’ he says to us. ‘I myself am love and you
are my image to the extent that the splendor of love shines out in you, to the extent that you
respond lovingly to me.’ God is waiting for us. He wants us to love him: should not our hearts
be moved by this appeal? At this very moment when he comes to meet us, he comes to meet
me. Will he find a response? Or will what happened to the vine of which God says in Isaiah:
‘He waited for it to produce grapes but it yielded wild grapes’, also happen to us? Is not our
Christian life often far more like vinegar than wine? Self-pity, conflict, indifference?… From
the Son’s death springs life, a new building is raised, a new vineyard. He, who at Cana
changed water into wine, has transformed his Blood into the wine of true love and thus
transforms the wine into his Blood.”

7. Other Considerations
• The evil tenants want what the landowner has: namely, his vineyard. They conspire with
unspeakable treachery to dispossess him of it. The irony is this: The landowner, who
represents God the Father, wants to give us what he has; we don’t have to try to steal it from
him. But even more than that, God wants to give us himself, not just what he has. In a way,
the most shocking sin of the evil tenants is that they do not want enough. What do we want?
Do we want God’s effects—what he can do for us and give us—or do we want God himself?
Because even if we “succeed” in extorting from God what we think we need to be happy, we
will never be happy until we possess what is Infinite. And that “what” is a Who. The only
possession of the Infinite that will satisfy us totally is the Infinite offered to us as a human
companion whom we can love and befriend. The Father sends his Son with the assurance,
“They will respect my Son”, because when we encounter the Son we come face to face with
an exceptionality that slays our loneliness, that puts to death all our pettiness, and that sets
our longing free. We have found What We Have Always Been Looking For. What we hoped
to receive in taking the vineyard has been freely given to us in the One who comes saying, “I
am the Vine and my Father is the Vinedresser.” Come, let us with all obedience embrace in
Holy Communion the Son sent by the Father and acquire his inheritance.

Recommended Resources

Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus. Yonkers: Magnificat, 2006.

Biblia Clerus: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html

Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach—Cycle A. Huntington: Our Sunday

Visitor, 2001.

Donahue, John R. The Gospel in Parable: Metaphor, Narrative, and Theology in the Synoptic
Gospels. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1988.

Hahn, Scott:
http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/homilyhelps/homilyhelps.cfm.

Martin, Francis: http://www.hasnehmedia.com/homilies.shtml