Our Sunday Reflection
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Readings of the Mass
SELECT HERE for the Audio recording of the Readings of
Sunday, October 4th, 2020, Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time.
SELECT HERE for the Readings of Sunday, October 4th, 2020, Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. -
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Sunday, October 4th, 2020, Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time.
‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes’
The Real Story
There is a very powerful truth-telling device, as we saw two Sundays ago: the device called story. Our brains love stories that include events with “before-and-after” built right in, along with suspense, action, relationships and intercommunication; not to mention emotion and disappointment and elation and so on. These elements are the most like daily experience of any device we have in the language.So, Sunday we will hear several tales of a vineyard.The first story tells about “a friend” who carefully built a vinery: clearing stones, building a watchtower, planting the choicest vines (First Reading). He even “hewed out a wine press.” But the vineyard yielded bad grapes. God tells the people of Jerusalem and Judah in vivid language that they themselves are this vineyard, and that he is going to destroy it and trample it down. They would not let God's love grow up among them.In the Gospel, Jesus embroiders this tale. In just one sentence, he handles the part about planting a vineyard, digging out a wine press, building a tower. Then he goes further.In his version he says that the owner rents his rich vineyard to tenants, as was the custom, and he trusts them to raise choice grapes for him. In due season he sends his servants to collect the yield—which must have been great because the tenants dishonestly want to keep everything including the vineyard. But the tenants beat or stone or even kill the servants!Next, a surprising, seemingly implausible twist to the tale. The owner decides to send his own son, thinking that the tenants will surely respect him. Would you have done the same? Wouldn't you or I have said, “I will keep my family away from these criminals”? I surely would. But not the owner. He sends his only son into the trap and the tenants kill him.The details of the two stories are different, but isn't it the same story, about God punishing those who fail to produce? Actually the two parables are not the same. There is much, much more in the Gospel. Jesus hints at this afterwards:
Did you never read in the Scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes.
This is a new metaphor, and it is the key to the Gospel tale. It fills the story with dramatic new meaning. The son sent into the vineyard is Jesus himself! He is to be rejected and killed, just as the prophets and the owner’s son were. But here is the difference: as God’s son he is entirely willing to go among the sinning people. He lives by compassion, so danger takes second place.If the main character in the Gospel were called Life, and it had its own choices to make, it would desire to turn into another being, one called Love. Life always yearns to go back to its source, the everlasting union called by that simple name, love. Greed and disregard stop this progress. True Life gets buried. It rises again when we look to Jesus on Sundays. He is love. He is there for us in our vineyard.God sent his own son into the trap of human life not because life is perfect, but because love is.
— John Foley, SJ
View the below videos for other reflections on the readings. -
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MASS: OCTOBER 4TH, 2020, TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME.