by Fr. Tommy Lane
God has used various ways down through the millennia and centuries to communicate with us to assure us of his love for us and his desire that we return his love by entering into friendship with him. Our first reading from the prophet Isaiah is one example (Isa 5:1-7). Isaiah begins by saying he will sing about his friend’s love of his vineyard. He doesn’t tell us at first who this friend is. His friend did everything he could for his vineyard: he cleared it of stones, planted the best vines in it, built a watchtower and winepress. Alas, the vineyard only yielded wild grapes, so instead of wine it produced vinegar. Then Isaiah’s friend asked a question, “What more could I have done for my vineyard?” The implied answer is, “nothing more.” At the end Isaiah tells us who his friend is and the vineyard. His friend is God, and the vineyard is the people of Israel. So, Isaiah is saying on behalf of God, that after all God did for Israel, his vineyard, they turned their back on him.
What more could God have done for his vineyard Israel? There is one more thing: God sent his Son, Jesus. Our Gospel today is Jesus telling a parable about this, the ultimate thing God did to assure us of his love for us and encourage us to enter into friendship with him (Matt 21:33-43). In Jesus’ parable, a landowner planted a vineyard and left tenants look after it. The tenants mistreated and killed his servants. Finally, the landowner sent his son, but they also killed his son. This is indeed how Israel treated God’s prophets and Jesus. God sent prophet after prophet but, for the most part, they did not pay much attention to them and killed some of them. It is shocking and hard to believe but the king had the prophet Isaiah of our first reading killed by being sawn in two (alluded to in Heb 11:37; Amos died as a result of a blow to his head.) Finally, God sent Jesus to try to win the hearts of his people. But the leaders disregarded Jesus and did to Jesus as he predicted in his parable: “they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” (Matt 21:39)
But that is not the end of the story. Jesus’ followers continued in fidelity to him—firstly the apostles and all those who were baptized by them who accepted Jesus as Lord. Down through the centuries Jesus has always had faithful followers. However, sometimes since the time of Jesus, people again distanced themselves from God, and God in his loving mercy reached out again to invite us back to his love. One example of Jesus reaching out again to remind us of his love and invite us is Jesus’ apparitions to St. Margaret Mary in France in which he revealed the love of his Sacred Heart for us. In December 1673, Jesus said to St. Margaret Mary,
My Divine Heart is so on fire with love for all mankind, and for you in particular, that, being no longer able to contain within itself the flames of this burning love, they must be spread abroad.
Jesus’ heart is on fire with love for all mankind as we see in images and statues of the Sacred Heart. What about our response to Jesus’ love? In his second apparition to St. Margaret Mary the next year, 1674, Jesus spoke about the ingratitude he receives in return for his love of us. Jesus said,
I feel this [ingratitude] more than all that I suffered during my Passion. If only they would make me some return for my love, I should think but little of all I have done for them and would wish, were it possible, to suffer still more. But the sole return they make for all my eagerness to do them good is to reject me and treat me with coldness. You at least console me by supplying for their ingratitude, as far as you are able.
We think of what Jesus suffered during his passion but that was not the end. Jesus said humanity’s ingratitude is worse than what he suffered during his passion, and he would think little of his passion if we were grateful. During the third and last revelation the next year, 1675, Jesus again spoke about the ingratitude he receives from humanity:
Behold this Heart, which has loved mankind so much, that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify to them its love; and in return I receive from the greater number nothing but ingratitude by reason of their irreverence and sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt which they show me in this Sacrament of Love.
During this month, when we reflect on respecting life, I think we could say that one of the ways in which we show ingratitude now is the lack of respect for every life that God has created.
Remembering the words of God through Isaiah in the first reading, all that God did for his vineyard Israel, and the parable of Jesus in the Gospel with God continually sending servants to his vineyard and eventually his son Jesus, and the words of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary on his love for us, it would be good for us to ask ourselves if we have given enough thought to how much God loves us and if we are responding with gratitude to Jesus. During the first apparition Jesus said his heart is inflamed with love for us and during the second, “If only they would make Me some return for My love, I should think but little of all I have done for them and would wish, were it possible, to suffer still more.” Jesus loves us; there is no question about that. The only question is our love of Jesus.
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2020
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday Year A
Guarding the Deposit of Faith and producing fruit for the Kingdom
Second Reading Related: Following Jesus begins in your mind