Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIX per Annum A
22 October 2023

You’ve heard the phrase: Politics makes for strange bedfellows.  If you need a break from the strange bedfellows keeping the US Congress from being able to elect a Speaker of the House… then this gospel passage gives you a brief diversion.  In the gospel we have the strange bedfellows of the Pharisees and the Herodians.  The Pharisees view Roman occupation of Judea as an abomination and the Herodians adopt a more cooperative stance with living in the gentile Roman world.  Yet, these two groups come together in a very charged exchange with Jesus by which the Pharisees attempt to entrap the Lord in this well known dilemma of paying the census tax to Caesar or not.  The Gospel passage makes clear that the Pharisees are motivated by malice toward the Lord and they are seeking to test him and to entrap him.  They butter him up with flattery, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.  And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion.”  They ask: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”  Now, this may not strike us as a really charged exchange, but it definitely is in the time of the Lord, for if the Lord answers “yes, it is lawful” then he will incite uproar among the Pharisees and their ilk by seeming to condone cooperation with Roman occupation.  If he says “no, it is not lawful” then he will be inspiring a tax revolt against Rome.  Rome historically dealt ferociously with such rebellions.

The ingenious response from the Lord is to ask for a coin that is used to pay the census tax.  Curiously, the Rome-rejecting Pharisees easily produce such a coin.  I guess they are more than willing to use the coin despite their protestations and religious purity.  In any event, we can learn a profound lesson by how the Lord dissolves their trap.  The Roman denarius coin bears the “ikon”, the Greek biblical text says, bears the “image” of Caesar, in this case the Emperor Tiberius Caesar.  The Pharisees and the Herodians easily identify that the coin bears the image and the inscription of Caesar.  The coin belongs to him, to the Empire.  The Lord then shifts the conversation away from the notion of cooperating in the tax.  Instead, the Lord maneuvers to make the focus about giving to someone what belongs to him.  In this case, Jesus says to give to Caesar what is his.

The Roman coin is stamped with the image of its owner, the one who has authority over it.  Jesus says to repay to Caesar what belongs to him. But he goes on to say, “and [repay] to God what belongs to God.”  Thinking about this Gospel image, we have a coin with the ikon, the image of Caesar.  It belongs to Caesar and should be given back to him.  But if we are to repay to God what belongs to Him, this begs a question: Where is God’s image? Where is it stamped so that we repay that “coin” back to Him?

In escaping their trap, the Lord teaches us a profound lesson about ourselves and about giving to God what He is owed.  And to grasp that we need to rest on the foundation of all that has preceded in the revelation of faith.  The Book of Genesis tells us a truth of creation.  In creation man is made, we are made, in God’s image and likeness.  Human persons are ikons of God.  Our faith tells us that, though we never lose the dignity of being made in God’s image, our likeness (that is, our “appearance”) is marred by the Fall, by the Original Sin we each inherit.  Though the image remains, our likeness to that image, our likeness to God, is disfigured by sin.  Our fallen nature, brought about by that first grave sin in the garden, carries the consequence of eternal separation from God.  By faith and baptism, our original holiness is restored, and the obstacle that bars our entrance to heaven is removed.  Thus, that is at least one reason why it is so important to be baptized, and quickly.  It’s a large part of why we baptize infants in our Catholic practice.  And so, I have some bad news for you, your kids are cute and all, but until they are baptized they are little pagans whose likeness to God has been disfigured!  That’s not so cute when it comes to heaven.  What about after baptism?  When in ongoing weakness we disfigure ourselves by sin, by the personal sins for which we bear guilt, confession restores our baptismal dignity long after we have been washed by the waters of regeneration.  And so, I have some bad news for us, we might look like disciples, but we are counterfeit “coins” for as long as God’s likeness is not visible in us, and not healed by confession.  When we commit sin and refuse the importance of confession we are fraudulent images.  In this, we aren’t giving back to God what belongs to Him.  In fact, God doesn’t accept sin as repayment for stamping us with His image.

This Gospel exchange takes place in the heated atmosphere of Jesus’ final days before he would lay down his life to pay all for us and for our salvation.  His words teach us of our innate dignity: that by God’s generous love He has stamped us with His own image, the image of His glory, giving us freedom, giving us the ability to use our minds, and to receive and to return His love.  And a repayment is expected.  The first reading teaches clearly that there are no other gods before the one true God.  We can’t make payment to idols, to other gods, and still have credit with the one true God.  The Gospel and the psalm tell us to give glory and honor to God, to give to Him what He is owed.  Living the life of faith and holiness guards our proper image and likeness and is the payment that gives to God what belongs to Him.  St. Paul says in his Letter to the Romans, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (6:23).

Sin mars the likeness of our image to God.  And sin is not the form of payment God accepts; it is not giving to God what belongs to Him.  The good news is that He Himself has paid the price to heal our sin.  In guarding our likeness to Him by faith and by striving personally for moral conduct, by using prayer and the helps He gives us in the sacraments, we are helping to populate the great census of Heaven.  By repaying to God what belongs to God, He pays greater dividends still by admitting us to eternal life in the Kingdom of His glory.

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVII per Annum A
8 October 2023

 The parable of the wicked tenants is one of the Lord’s final parables before his passion, death, and resurrection.  In context, the Lord is speaking this parable in Jerusalem and in the face of mounting tension and opposition as factions seek to find ways to get rid of him.  Since we have heard a few parables lately, I think it is helpful to first recall this context and to recall to whom the Lord is speaking.  This parable takes place after the Lord cleanses the temple and curses the fig tree that did not have fruit, so we can observe that there are some dramatic things going on surrounding this parable.  After those episodes, the Lord returns to the Temple and the chief priests and the elders of the people, the religious authorities, are there and they want to know by what authority he is doing these things.  So, we learn in context, that the parable we hear today is directed to the religious leaders of the Jewish people.  To them, and not to a generic group or to the crowds, the Lord speaks this parable of the wicked tenants and the vineyard.  This parable sets up a confrontation with authority.  The Lord is speaking to the Jewish priests and religious leaders. He is speaking to them in the Holy City Jerusalem.  And he is speaking to them in the Temple.  That’s like putting several exclamation points on the notion of confrontation with authority.

We learn something of the background here by being aware of the prophecy of Isaiah, in which he uses the same image of a vineyard eight centuries earlier.  In fact, the Lord is making a direct reference to the prophecy of Isaiah in his use of this parable.  We heard that earlier prophecy of Isaiah in the first reading.  In it we find that God is the owner and lover of a vineyard for which He does everything so that it produces good fruit.  In Isaiah we learn that the vineyard is the people of Israel and also Jerusalem, the inhabitants of the Holy City.  Isaiah is here prophesying about the failure of the people of Israel to produce the good fruit of covenant relationship with God.  In producing wild grapes instead of good, that is, the bitter grapes of sin and lack of fidelity, Isaiah prophesies about the destruction of Jerusalem, this privileged place of encounter with God.

In referencing this parable, the Lord is not merely using a familiar image of agriculture.  He, like Isaiah, is offering a stinging indictment of the failure of the Holy City, its inhabitants, the people of Israel to produce the good grapes of holiness.  And the Lord is taking it right to the top by this confrontation with the religious leaders of the nation of Israel, the vineyard, from which God demands a good harvest for a worthy vintage.  With the Old Testament background in mind we can identify that this parable speaks of God as the vineyard owner.  He demands a yield of good fruit from his vineyard, that is from His people Israel.  He goes to great length to prepare his vineyard and to protect it such that there should be no reason it would not produce good fruit.  He sends his servants to announce the time of harvest and these can serve as an image of the prophets.  In all this we learn that Jesus is accusing the Jewish religious authorities of being the wicked tenants, who do their own thing with the vineyard, who yield bitter grapes, and who reject and kill the prophets and even the Son himself.  And that’s the twist of this parable.  That God would send His own Son to arrogant wicked tenants who are not serving His purposes for the precious vineyard, but who are doing their own thing with a vineyard that is not their own.  In this we have another lesson of the reckless generosity of God who goes to great lengths and does everything necessary such that His people will produce the fruit He requires and demands.  He sends His own Son knowing that he likewise will be rejected and killed, but he will become the chief cornerstone of the Kingdom.  The chief priests and the elders know that Jesus is speaking this parable about them.  If you read the whole passage you find just two verses after today’s passage this line: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.”

Born within the Jewish people, Jesus is the faithful Israel.  He establishes a new Kingdom, a new covenant.  This takes place in his Church called together from Israel and from all nations.  Thus, taking all this imagery together we should note this progression: The vineyard is the house of Israel.  The house of Israel is fulfilled in the Church.  Thus, the vineyard is the Church.  The Church is the fulfillment of that precious vineyard that belongs to God the Father, from which He demands the good fruit of holiness, and to which He sends His own beloved Son who dies for our salvation such that nothing should prevent us from producing that required fruit.  Nothing, that is, but our own arrogance and refusal in freedom to belong to the vineyard and to do what God demands.

We live in a time of immense arrogance.  Man places himself in the center of the universe, in the center of all things, and makes himself the reference point for whatever he wants to be true – even when that is a lie.  Fallen and arrogant man decides that things around himself must change and conform to what makes him feel whole and complete.  He foolishly says, it is not I who must change but it is the order of the world and even Christ’s teaching that must convert to me.  Sadly, even people who should know better fall right in line with this way of thinking and acting.  As predicted in 2 Timothy 4:3-4, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.”  Today’s parable of the Lord is a direct confrontation with the religious authorities of the vineyard that is the house of Israel.  It doesn’t take much imagination to find a direct application to the religious authorities of the fulfillment of the vineyard that is the Church.  We live in a time of great confusion, arrogance, and cynicism.  With so much instantaneous mass communication you likely are painfully aware of the silly, confusing, and stupid things that even some of the Church’s religious leaders speak.  I know many of you are aware of this and you worry.  You are bombarded with feeling like leaders who should be helping you save your souls and helping you raise your children in salvation are working against you.  I can’t but conclude that our time is not much different in needing the confrontation that our Blessed Lord leveled against some of the top leaders of his time.  We have some wicked tenants in the vineyard.  I wish it was not so.  But it seems it is.  And the Lord has still laid down his life for us.  And we are not going to abandon him, even if some leaders seem bent on destroying the good grapes and planting seeds that are going nowhere but to destruction.  Take heart!  The stone rejected by the builders is the corner stone and it is wonderful in our eyes!  What did we hear in the second reading?  “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.  Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6-7).

We hear this parable in the month dedicated to the Holy Rosary.  My brothers and sisters, we can’t be unaware and we won’t be naïve about the wolves in sheep’s clothing that cause us suffering in the vineyard.  But that doesn’t mean that giving excessive focus to the crop of wild grapes becomes virtuous or wise either.  Spending too much of our time and energy in the echo chamber of gossip, watching YouTube videos, and reading blogs (even those that rightfully expose the empty talk that confuses us in our time) will not result in peace and a good harvest that God demands from us.  Even when it is a matter of hearing good teachers refute the bad teachers of our time, how many times – really?! – how many times do we need to hear the same good argument refuting the nonsense that disturbs us?  Again, we shouldn’t be unaware of the false teachers and we shouldn’t be unware of the good arguments that refute them.  However, how much time are we willing to give to unite ourselves in relationship to God?  Only that will save us and lead us to be good grapes.  For every time I am ready to hit play on the next YouTube video from that good priest, or for every time I am ready to type in the web address of that blog that speaks the authentic truth, am I willing instead to pray, to go to adoration to be with the Lord, to pick up the Rosary?  In this month of the Rosary, I want to challenge you to a new dedication to that prayer, a real weapon for our times.  Get here early to Mass and join in its public recitation.  If you don’t pray it at home, turn off the television and get doing that as a family.  Do it often, even daily.  If you have even just 20 minutes in a car ride, you have time to pray the Rosary.  You men and fathers had best be the ones taking the lead in making this happen in your families, to protect the vineyard of the domestic Church.  If there is resistance and complaining, who cares!  You lead.  Be the priest of your home and speak with your wife about age-appropriate ways to pray as a family.  Pray for the Pope and for our bishop.  Pray for all the bishops, no matter whether you think they are the good ones or the bad ones.  They need our prayers.  Only prayer and relationship with God will afford us peace in our times and only that will save us when the vineyard owner finally comes and puts those wicked tenants to a wretched death.  Our Lady is the premier model of faith and discipleship and of producing good fruit.  Pray for us, oh Holy Mother of God!  That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ!