In today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus’ parable of the tenants. In the parable, God is the “man [who] planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and built a tower.” We are the “tenant farmers” whom he “leased [the vineyard] to” when he “left on a journey.” In other words, we are stewards of the manifold blessings and graces that God has bestowed on us in our lives - from our families to our jobs to our gifts and talents, essentially, everything that we have, most especially, our own lives and one another. The servants in the parable represent the many prophets that we hear about throughout the Old Testament, whom the people of God put to death.
After sending his servants, the owner of the vineyard decided to send his beloved son. This should sound familiar to us because we heard it in the Gospel yesterday on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (John 3:16-18):
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. [And here is the hinge, my sisters and brothers in Christ] Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Now, what struck me the most in the parable of the tenants is what the man said when he sent his beloved son. He said, “They will respect my son.” Unfortunately, not only did the tenant farmers not respect his son, they seized him and put him to death.
And so, my sisters and brothers in Christ, we ask ourselves this question: “Do we respect the Son of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” Or do we reject him like the “stone” that the builder rejected? God does not need our respect; however, we have respect, or fear, of the Lord for our own good. It is as Saint Peter wrote: the “grace and peace be yours in abundance through knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” so that “through the knowledge of him” we “may come to share in the divine nature” of the Son of God who humbled himself to share in our humanity.
Saint Peter tells us how we can grow in our relationship with our Jesus Christ, namely by making “every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.” This is what Jesus teaches us in the Great Commandment, saying: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39). Love leads to mutual affection, to devotion, to endurance, to self-control, to knowledge, and, ultimately, to virtue that increases our faith in and relationship with God.
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