Mass Readings:
- Isaiah 5:1-7
- Philippians 4:6-9
- Matthew 21:33-43
The image of the vineyard is one of the most familiar biblical images for the people of God, and it is certainly one of the most attractive. A vineyard suggests something carefully planted, patiently cultivated and expected, in due season, to produce an abundant harvest. Yet the readings for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time remind us that the vineyard is not planted merely for its appearance. It exists for the sake of its fruit. Isaiah's famous "Song of the Vineyard" begins almost like a love song. The prophet speaks of his beloved, using a Hebrew word derived from dwd, the same root from which the name David is formed, and at first the passage seems to describe the tender relationship between a man and his beloved. It soon becomes clear, however, that the beloved is God and that the vineyard represents Israel, the people whom God has chosen and cultivated. The image is particularly powerful because Isaiah does not describe a careless owner. The beloved has chosen a fertile hillside, cleared it of stones, planted it with the choicest vines, built a watchtower and prepared a winepress. Everything necessary for a fruitful harvest has been provided. The question is therefore not whether the vineyard has received sufficient care, but why, after receiving so much, it has produced such a disappointing harvest.
The answer is given in one of the most striking pieces of Hebrew wordplay in the Old Testament. God expected mishpat, justice and right judgement, but found mispach, the shedding of blood; he expected tsedaqah, righteousness, but heard tse'aqah, the cry of those who had been wronged. The difference is only a few sounds, yet the contrast is enormous. Israel has received God's covenant, his law and his protection, but the blessings entrusted to it have not produced the social and moral transformation that God expected.
When the vineyard produces the wrong fruit (Isaiah 5:1-7)
This is important because Isaiah's criticism is considerably broader than a complaint about religious formalism. The people of God have not merely failed to perform the correct ceremonies or maintain the correct forms of worship; their failure has become visible in the way they live. The opening chapters of Isaiah speak repeatedly about pride, injustice, exploitation and the neglect of the vulnerable. The covenant with God was supposed to produce a people whose common life reflected the character of the God whom they worshipped.
There is therefore something profoundly uncomfortable about the image of the vineyard, because it prevents religion from becoming a private possession. It is possible to have the appearance of belonging to God while producing little of what God actually desires. A vineyard may be beautifully planted, carefully enclosed and regularly cultivated, yet the decisive question remains what kind of grapes it produces.
The warning becomes particularly serious because God's judgement upon the vineyard is described not as an arbitrary act of anger but as the consequence of its refusal to bear fruit. The protective hedge is removed, the wall is broken down, the vineyard is exposed to trampling and allowed to become overgrown with thorns. The image expresses a fundamental biblical principle: God's grace does not abolish human responsibility.
The people of Israel had begun to behave as though their election guaranteed their security regardless of how they lived. They had received God's favour and gradually treated it as though it were a possession to which they were entitled. The prophet's message is that God's covenant is a gift, but a gift that creates obligations. The more one has received, the greater the responsibility to respond faithfully.
The Son sent into the vineyard (Matthew 21:33-43)
Jesus deliberately takes up Isaiah's imagery in the parable of the wicked tenants. His listeners would have recognised the allusion immediately, because the vineyard was already an established biblical image for Israel. The difference is that Jesus now develops the image into a story about the rejection of God's messengers and, ultimately, the rejection of God's own Son. The owner of the vineyard represents God; the vineyard represents the people entrusted with God's covenant; the servants represent the prophets whom God sent throughout Israel's history; and the son, sent at the end, represents Christ himself. The progression is deliberate. The owner does not immediately abandon his vineyard when the first servants are rejected. He sends others. Even after they are treated with violence, he sends more. Finally, he sends his son. The patience of the owner is therefore as important as the wickedness of the tenants. Again and again God gives his people an opportunity to respond, and again and again they refuse. The tragedy of the parable lies in the fact that the tenants have confused stewardship with ownership. They have been entrusted with the vineyard, but they behave as though it belongs to them. This is precisely where the parable becomes relevant beyond its original historical setting. Jesus is certainly speaking first about the religious leaders of Israel and about their rejection of the messengers of God, culminating in their rejection of Christ. The first responsibility of the modern reader, therefore, is not to congratulate himself that the condemnation belongs to someone else. The more uncomfortable question is what happens when the same temptation to possess rather than serve enters the life of God's people. The Church does not belong to us. The Gospel does not belong to us. Even our own faith is not an achievement by which we can congratulate ourselves upon having become better than others. Everything has been received. We are stewards of what belongs to God.
Jesus then brings the parable to its climax by quoting Psalm 118: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." The image is particularly appropriate because the very people who believed themselves to be building God's kingdom were rejecting the One upon whom that kingdom would ultimately depend. For the New Testament, there can be no ambiguity about the identity of this cornerstone. St Paul declares that "no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ", while elsewhere Christ is described as the spiritual rock. The Church's existence therefore depends not upon its own ingenuity, influence or institutional strength, but upon the crucified and risen Christ. This is also why the conclusion of the parable is not simply that one group has failed and another has succeeded. The kingdom is entrusted to those who will "produce its fruits". The decisive issue remains fruitfulness. The Church is not preserved by God so that Christians may congratulate themselves upon being the occupants of a secure religious vineyard. She exists to bear witness to Christ and to produce the fruits of the Kingdom. Her history contains moments of extraordinary holiness as well as periods of corruption, weakness and failure, and the same is true of individual Christians. God's promise to his Church is not a promise that every Christian society, institution or generation will prosper indefinitely. It is the far greater promise that Christ will remain with his Church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against her.
What does Christian fruit look like? (Philippians 4:6-9)
This is where St Paul provides an unexpectedly practical answer. His words to the Philippians can almost be read as a description of the fruit that God expects to find in his vineyard. The Christian, Paul says, should be characterised by prayer and thanksgiving, by peace rather than anxiety, and by a mind occupied with what is true, honourable, just, pure, gracious and worthy of praise. The list is remarkably concrete. Christianity is not simply a collection of propositions that we believe about God; it is supposed to produce a recognisable manner of living. This is why Paul's exhortation to imitate him should not be understood as evidence of personal vanity. He knows himself to be the least of the apostles and insists that whatever he has become is the result of God's grace working through him. When he tells the Philippians to imitate him, he is therefore pointing beyond himself towards the grace of God that has transformed his life. The same principle applies to the Christian life today. If our faith never affects the way we speak to people, handle disagreement, use money, respond to suffering, treat those who cannot benefit us, or speak about those with whom we disagree, then something is wrong with the vineyard. Paul speaks of justice, and biblical justice means far more than winning an argument or defending one's own interests. It includes integrity, righteousness and the refusal to apply one moral standard to our friends and another to our enemies. A Christian should be capable of recognising the good even when it is done by someone with whom he disagrees, just as he should be capable of being ashamed of wrongdoing even when it is committed by someone on his own side.
Paul speaks also of what is pure, and this should make us examine not only our actions but the material with which we willingly fill our minds. A person cannot spend hours delighting in gossip, scandal and the humiliation of others and then imagine that such things leave no mark upon the imagination. Even when we tell ourselves that we are consuming such material merely in order to condemn it, we can gradually become accustomed to looking at the world through its categories. Christian virtue is ultimately more than occasional good behaviour. The Christian is called to develop stable habits of goodness: faith, hope and charity, together with prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. The vineyard is cultivated precisely so that good fruit becomes more natural and bad fruit less welcome.
People cultivated by prayer
There is a fitting connection here with the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, celebrated on 7 October. The Rosary belongs to that long Catholic tradition of cultivating the interior life so that faith may become fruitful in ordinary existence. It is not an escape from the demands of the world, but a school of contemplation in which the Christian repeatedly places the mysteries of Christ before the mind and heart, allowing the Gospel to shape the way he sees and responds to reality. The historical association of the feast with the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 is particularly significant. On 7 October of that year, the forces of the Holy League confronted the Ottoman fleet in one of the decisive naval battles of the Mediterranean. Pope St Pius V called Christians to pray the Rosary for the protection of the Church, and the Christian victory was attributed by the Pope to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. The feast that emerged from that historical memory was initially associated with Our Lady of Victory and later became the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The enduring significance of Lepanto, however, is not simply military. Its deeper place in Catholic memory lies in the conviction that the Church's ultimate defence does not rest upon human strength alone. The Rosary became a reminder that when the Church finds herself confronted by forces that appear greater than her own resources, her first response must be a return to God. There is also a beautiful theological connection with the vineyard itself. Mary is the woman who received the word of God with perfect faith and bore its fruit in the world by bearing Christ. At Cana she directs attention away from herself towards her Son: "Do whatever he tells you." Her entire life can therefore be understood as a perfect response to the divine cultivation of the human soul. She receives grace and allows it to become fruitful.
The question posed by this Sunday's readings is therefore remarkably simple, although answering it honestly may not be easy: what kind of fruit is growing in the vineyard that God has entrusted to us? We can spend a great deal of time discussing the condition of the Church, the decline of Christian culture, the failures of society and the behaviour of those who no longer believe. There may be truth in many of those observations, but Isaiah, Christ and St Paul direct our attention somewhere more immediate. Before asking what fruit other people are producing, we must allow the owner of the vineyard to inspect our own. God has given us much. He has given us the Church, the Scriptures, the sacraments, the example of the saints and, above all, his Son. He does not ask us to repay these gifts as though grace were a commercial transaction, because everything begins with his generosity. He does, however, expect that grace to bear fruit. Perhaps the simplest way to prepare for the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is therefore to ask whether our prayer is actually producing anything in us. Does it make us more peaceful, more truthful, more charitable and more patient? Does it make us less proud and less vindictive? Does it make us more willing to forgive and more courageous in doing what is right? The vineyard belongs to God, and so do we. The question is not whether we have been planted there, because we have. The question is what we are becoming under the patient cultivation of the divine Gardener. For, in the end, God is not looking merely for leaves, branches or an impressive appearance. He is looking for fruit.
Fr. Dominik Domagala acquired a Master's in History of Liturgy and obtained a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture at St Patrick’s College in Maynooth. His main interests concern the OT and Books of Maccabees. He is the author of “The Social Sermon” blog on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Check out more at the website: thesocialsermon.com
