There is an urgency and clarity about Sunday’s Gospel that is often lacking in modern Christians, including the clergy. The message is urgent, provocative, and clear: there is a day of judgment coming for every one of us and we must be ready for it. The message is a sobering one for a modern world that is often dismissive of judgment—and certainly of Hell. Jesus clearly says that the Kingdom of God can be taken from us for our refusal to accept its fruits in our life.
The parables that Jesus related to teach about judgment and the reality of Hell are often quite vivid, even shocking in their harsh imagery; they are certainly not stories for the easily offended. They are also difficult to take for those who have tried to refashion Jesus into a pleasant, affirming sort of fellow rather than the uncompromising prophet and Lord that He is.
No one spoke of Hell more often than Jesus did. Attempting to reconcile these bluntly presented teachings with the God who loves us so much points to the deeper mysteries of justice and mercy and their interaction with human freedom. This point must be clear, however: no one loves us more than Jesus does and yet no one spoke of Hell and its certainty more often than Jesus did. No one warned us of judgment and its inescapable consequences more often than did Jesus. Out of love for us, Jesus spoke of death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. As one who loves us, He wants none of us to be lost. So He warns us; He speaks the truth in love.
Historically, this parable had meaning for the ancient Jews that had already come to pass. God had established and cared for his vine, Israel. He had given them every blessing; He had led them out of slavery and established them in the Promised Land. Yet when searching for the fruits of righteousness He found little. God sent many prophets to warn them and to call forth those fruits, but they were persecuted, rejected, and even murdered. Finally, God sent His Son, but He too was murdered. There comes forth a sentence: He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times … Therefore, I say to you, the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit. By 70 A.D., Jerusalem was destroyed; the Temple was never to be rebuilt.
The Jewish people are not singled out in the Scriptures., All of us, like them, are a vineyard. If we are not careful, their story will be ours. Like the ancients, we have a decision to make. Either we accept the offer of the Kingdom and thereby yield to the Lord’s work and bring forth a harvest, or we face judgment for rejecting that offer. God will not force us to accept His Kingship or His Kingdom. We have a choice to make and that choice will be at the heart of the judgment we will face.
Let’s take a closer look at today’s Gospel and apply it to the vineyard of our lives.
I. THE SOWING – The text says, There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
Note the care and providence of the landowner (God), who has given each of us life and every kind of grace. The image of the vineyard indicates that we have the capacity to bear fruit. This signifies the many gifts, talents, and abilities that we have been given by God.
The hedge calls to mind the protection of His grace and mercy. Though the world can be a tempting place, God has put a hedge of protection around us that is sufficient to keep us safe from serious sin, if we accept its power.
But a hedge implies limits. Although God’s protective graces are sufficient, we must live within limits, within the hedge that keeps the wild animals of temptation from devouring the fruits of our vine.
The tower is symbolic of the Church, which stands guard like a watchman warning those who live within the boundaries of the hedge of dangers. The tower (the Church) is stands as a sign of contradiction to the hostile world outside, which seeks to devour the fruit of the vineyard.
That the landowner leases the vineyard is a reminder that we are not our own; we have been purchased at great cost. God and God alone created all these things we call ours. We are but stewards, even of our own lives. We belong to God; we must render an account to Him and show forth fruits.
This point must be emphasized: God has given us great care. He has given us His grace and mercy—His very self. As the text from Isaiah says, What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done? God loves us and does not want us to be lost. He gives us every grace and mercy we need. The Lord says, As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ez 33:11) This must be emphasized because we grumble too quickly about the coming judgment. God offers every possible grace to save us. It is up to us to accept or reject His help.
II. THE SEEKING – The text says, When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.
There come moments in our lives when God looks for fruits. Remember that He is the owner and the fruits are rightfully His. He has done everything to bring forth the fruit and now deserves to see the produce of His grace in the vineyard of our life, which is His own.
What fruits does the Lord seek? The values and fruits of the Kingdom: faith, justice, mercy, peace, forgiveness, chastity, faithfulness, generosity, love of the poor, love of one’s family and friends—even love of one’s enemy—kindness, truth, sincerity, courage to speak the truth and witness to the faith, and an evangelical spirit.
The text says that the owner sent his servants to obtain the produce. Here also is evidence of God’s mercy. Historically, God’s “servants” were the prophets. God sent them not only to bring forth the harvest of justice, but also to clarify and apply His Word, and to remind and warn sinners. God patiently sent many generations of prophets to help Israel.
It is the same for us. God sends us many “prophets.” Perhaps they are priests or religious, parents, catechists, teachers, or role models; but they are all part of God’s plan to warn us to bear fruit and to help call forth and obtain some of those fruits. Each in his own way says, as St. Paul did in today’s second reading, Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me (Phil 4:8-9).
Yes, God seeks fruits, and rightfully so. He sends His servants, the prophets, to help call them forth in us.
III. THE SINNING – The text says, But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
Despite all that the owner has done by sending His servants, the tenants reject them all, and with increasing vehemence; their hearts grow harder. The landowner even goes so far to demonstrate his love and his will to save that he sends his own son, but they drag him outside the vineyard and kill him. Yes, Jesus died outside the city gates, murdered for seeking the fruit of faith from the tenants of the vineyard.
What of us? There are too many who reject God’s prophets. They do so with growing vehemence and abusive treatment. Many people today despise the Church, the Scriptures, parents, friends, and Christians in general who seek to clarify and apply God’s Word and to warn of the need to be ready. Repeated resistance can cause a hardening of the heart to set in. In the end, there are some—in fact many according to Jesus—who effectively kill the life of God within them and utterly reject the Kingdom of God and its values. They do not want to live lives that show forth forgiveness, mercy, love of enemies, chastity, justice, love of the poor, generosity, kindness, and witness to the Lord and the truth.
We ought to be very sober because there are many, many people today who are like this. Some have merely drifted away and are indifferent. (Some have been hurt or are struggling to believe, but at least they remain open.) Still others are passionate in their hatred for the Church, Scripture, and anything to do with God, explicitly rejecting many of the values of His kingdom. We must continue in our attempts to reach them.
IV. THE SENTENCE – The text says, What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes? They answered him, ‘He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.’ Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.
Here, then, is the sentence: If you don’t want the Kingdom, you don’t have to have it. On one level, it would seem everyone wants the Kingdom. In other words, everyone who has any faith in God at all wants to go to Heaven. But what is Heaven? It is the fullness of the Kingdom of God. It is not just a place of our making. It is that place where the will of God, the Kingdom’s values, are in full flower. Many, however, do not want to live chastely, do not want to forgive, do not want to be generous, do not want to love the poor, do not want God or anyone else at the center, do not want to worship God.
Self exclusion – Having rejected the Kingdom’s values, and having rejected the prophets who warned them, many simply exclude themselves from the Kingdom. God will not force the Kingdom on anyone. If, even after God’s grace and mercy and His pleading through the prophets, you don’t want it, you don’t have to have it. It will be taken from you and given to those who do.
The existence of Hell is rooted in God’s respect for our freedom, for we have been called to love. Love must be free, not compelled. Therefore, Hell has to be a reality. It is the “alternative arrangement” that others make for themselves in their rejection of the Kingdom of God. At our death, our decision is forever fixed.
Yes, Hell and the judgment that precedes it are clearly taught in today’s Gospel and in many other places (e.g., Matt 23:33; Lk 16:23; Mk 43:47; Matt 5:29; Matt 10:28; Matt 18:9; Matt 5:22; Matt 11:23; Matt 7:23; Matt 25:41; Mk 9:48; Luke 13:23; Rev 22:15). These teachings come from a Lord who loves us and wants to save us, but who is also well aware of our stubborn and stiff-necked ways.
What is a healthy response to this teaching? To work earnestly for the salvation of souls, beginning with our own. Nothing has destroyed evangelization and missionary activity more than the modern notion that everyone goes to Heaven. Nothing has so destroyed zeal for the moral life and hunger for the Sacraments, prayer, and Scripture. And nothing is so contrary to Scripture as the dismissal of Hell with the false notion that all are going to Heaven.
But rather than panic or despair, we must get to work and be more urgent in our quest to win souls for Christ. Whom does the Lord want you to work with to draw back to Him? Pray and ask Him: “Who, Lord?” The Lord does not want any to be lost. He still sends His prophets (this means you) to draw back anyone who will listen. Will you work for the Lord? Will you work for souls?
There is a day of judgment looming and we must be made ready for it by the Lord. Will you be urgent about it, for yourself and others?
MY RESPONSE:
Having recently sent some of my relatives the message below and only receiving one reply (an acceptable one), I must say it’s tempting to give up trying to reach out to people. However, this morning I read Msgr. Charles Pope’s post regarding this Sunday’s Gospel (copied below with his kind permission – following my message to family.)
My message to family:
As far as I know, no one to whom I am sending this message has renounced their Catholic faith. Therefore, I speak to you as a fellow Catholic, regardless of how actively each of us may be practicing our mutual faith. That’s between God and us, individually.
I think it should be obvious to all of us that there has been a great degradation in moral behavior among our fellow brethren throughout the world. And I think this is something we all should be gravely concerned about. I really don’t think I need to list specific moral behavioral aberrations. Even if you are only minimally in tune with the teachings of Jesus and his Catholic Church, all of them should be quite obvious to you. They are so numerous!
So what is the point of my message? It is to share with you my – and solicit your – grave concern for the wellbeing of ourselves, our loved ones and all mankind.
Perhaps we must first be attuned to and seriously concerned about what is happening in our Catholic Church. Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, avalanches, tsunamis, nuclear bombs, and so on, can exterminate human lives, but only the violence of rejecting the teachings of Christ Jesus in union with his Father and the Holy Spirit, can exterminate the life of a soul. And that is what is going on in our beloved Catholic Church today. The most horrific crime against humanity and its Creator is being committed by those to whom Christ has entrusted our souls.
Please join me in my concern and prayers.
Sinner Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass
by Msgr. Charles Pope (posted with permission – source)
This column touches on something that really concerns me. Imagination is the practical intellect but how is the imagination of our people, especially our young people, being formed? Not by the lives of the saints, that is for sure.
They are being given an imaginative formation by many media and in many venues that will greatly assist them in becoming fornicators, [engaged in homosexual acts and transsexualism], apostates, single parents, accessories to the murder of their progeny and denizens of Hell forever and ever. [note – edited for language]
Aside from a very great deal of tongue clucking, nothing, and I mean nothing is being done to address this ongoing unresisted De-Evangelization. Since it entered the Catholic home in the mid-fifties, when has any successor of the Apostles attempted to pry the television out of the homes of his subjects? In light of that enormous lapse, it is simply madness on steroids to talk about the New Evangelization . . .and the talk is endless.
I, for one, am sick to death of it and especially of its monetization, the canned programs, the speakers, the articles, the nagging. It is utterly and completely beside the point. Our young people are being corrupted by the hour, but our bishops evidently think it is not ‘winsome” to be “negative,” to speak of Hell, of near occasions of sin, of the responsibility of fathers to be the gate-keepers of their homes. No, no, no, smile, be positive, be happy. Be “winsome”- another concept from the Evangelical playbook.
Well, one would have to say that evidently pornography is far more winsome than the faith, given how many converts it has made to sensuality. And as for the other popular meme among the New Evangelists, the winsomeness of beauty, in the ordinary course of pursuing a news story on the internet one frequently encounter pictures of young women in various stages of undress who are drop-dead gorgeous. It is politically correct to say they are being “objectified,” and I will admit to not having a clue to what that might mean in the face of the obvious fact they are quite obviously being glorified and have become role models for our young women. Who can dispute that they are beautiful? That they are physically winsome? That they are making converts?
And if Our Lord is supposed to be our model in everything, including evangelization, where did he speak of beauty or even allude to it, except when speaking of the flowers of the field that perish. Yet he did in many places, especially in Matthew, speak of Hell and of its terrors in horrific detail. It would seem that the ugliness and horror of Hell is a much better tool in the evangelists armamentarium than beauty, and a truly Catholic approach found in all the great evangelists of the past: St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Paul of the Cross, and many, many others. it is simply a theological fad, and no more, to have abandoned something so effective. Yet, if our preachers will not present us with the horrors of hell, we may be sure that Our Lord will . . .in the form of plague, famine and war, till people get a glimpse of eternal doom and cry out for mercy. That is ever His way.
My way of saying thank you for this column, Msgr. Pope. This stern approach is badly, badly needed.
Thank you, Msgr Pope. I saved your writing so that I could read through it thoroughly and digest it to use in the future. We need to hear about this from the pulpits in church and in the Catholic schools. I, also, agree with the 2 commentators. Oh how I wish that most of my family and relatives could even be addressed and spoken to as in the first commentator’s letter. Sadly, even though they were raised with solid Catholic teaching, most of them have lost much if not all of their faith. I’ve been praying for them for years, yet, now they are teaching their children and grandchildren their errors. Instead of gathering, they are scattering. “He who does not gather, scatters.”
One family member calls himself an agnostic and “married” his spouse in a “civil ceremony” and never baptized their 2 children. Some lived with their boyfriend/ girlfriend before marriage and helped their children to do the same when they were older. One talked of often thinking of suicide and not knowing if there is a Heaven or hell, yet searching out eastern or new age “religions”. Another got angry over any talk about God. At least one of the young adults dabbled in witchcraft. A few of them marched in the women’s march for reproductive rights, which is really looking for the right to kill their own flesh and blood children in the wombs and to help other women to do the same. Some have become pro-homosexual activists and have brought their young children in on that cause. Most have supported and continue to support the most pro-death, pro-homosexual union politicians.
Sadly, I could go on and on, but I just wanted to give you an idea of what seems to have transpired since the ‘church of nice’ has lulled so many into some state of sappyness and the lack of any fear of the Lord. They dropped off from going to Church and the Sacraments and went downhill from there. They have become secularists and seemingly one with the world, to the extreme that they think that us practicing Catholics are slow witted and just not with it or ignorant.
Well,
fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.
Unfortunately, it’s sad to say this about my own family and relatives, but a lot of them have bachelors or masters degrees and even further education, but they lack wisdom. They have a lot of nice homes and vehicles, material possessions, but,…
“For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?”
I think about hell often and am very concerned about them. I love them and so I pray everyday during Rosary and Mass that they will all get to Heaven one day. Therefore, I thank you for telling the truth and not being “flufftastic”, as my solid Catholic child likes to say. Thank you for coming right out to let people know that Jesus loves us so much, that He tells us the truth about hell. He wants us to get to Heaven to be with Him, but we choose God/ Heaven or satan/ hell by our choices in what we say and do in life.
Please, pray for my loved ones to turn to God and do His will and get to Heaven one day. Thank you very much. God bless you and your readers.
They have all run, like spiritless whispers, to hide in cellars and under baskets. What Shepherds abandon the flock, but those who were only for hire. And the sheep are left for slaughter, their hooves they tear off, their children they feed to the fire, their souls they sell for a pair of shoes.
ZECHARIAH 11
1 Open your doors, O Lebanon,
that the fire may devour your cedars!
2 Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen,
for the glorious trees are ruined!
Wail, oaks of Bashan,
for the thick forest has been felled!
3 Hark, the wail of the shepherds,
for their glory is despoiled!
Hark, the roar of the lions,
for the jungle of the Jordan is laid waste!
4 Thus said the Lord my God: “Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. 5 Those who buy them slay them and go unpunished; and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the Lord, I have become rich’; and their own shepherds have no pity on them. 6 For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, says the Lord. Lo, I will cause men to fall each into the hand of his shepherd, and each into the hand of his king; and they shall crush the earth, and I will deliver none from their hand.”
7 So I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slain for those who trafficked in the sheep. And I took two staffs; one I named Grace, the other I named Union. And I tended the sheep. 8 In one month I destroyed the three shepherds. But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me. 9 So I said, “I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die; what is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and let those that are left devour the flesh of one another.” 10 And I took my staff Grace, and I broke it, annulling the covenant which I had made with all the peoples. 11 So it was annulled on that day, and the traffickers in the sheep, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. 12 Then I said to them, “If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. 13 Then the Lord said to me, “Cast it into the treasury”—the lordly price at which I was paid off by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and cast them into the treasury in the house of the Lord. 14 Then I broke my second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
15 Then the Lord said to me, “Take once more the implements of a worthless shepherd. 16 For lo, I am raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for the perishing, or seek the wandering, or heal the maimed, or nourish the sound, but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.
17 Woe to my worthless shepherd,
who deserts the flock!
May the sword smite his arm
and his right eye!
Let his arm be wholly withered,
his right eye utterly blinded!”