A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord said to the chief priest and the elders of the people, notice he's talking to the elite of the elite, the cream of the cream. Listen to this parable. There was a property owner who planted a vineyard and put a hedge around it, dug out of that, and then erected a tower. Then he leased it out to tenant farmers and then proceeded to go on a long journey.
When Vinny Chimes came, he dispatched his slaves to the tenants to obtain his share of the grapes. The tenants responded by seizing the slaves. They beat one of them, killed another, and then stoned the third. A second time, the owner dispatched even more slaves than before. But the the tenants treated the second batch the same way that they had treated the first.
Finally, the owner sent his own son. They will respect my son, he said. Now when the tenant saw the man the the owner's son now you have to understand here that when a a farm or a vineyard, if the owner died without any without any family, without any legal inherit people to inherit it, then the people who were the tenants got possession became the property owners of that land. So they knew their law. So when the, the tenant farmers taking care of the of the vintage and the grapes saw the sun, the tenants then said one to another, there is the one who will inherit everything.
Let us kill him, and then we we shall have the vineyard. With that, they seized the boy, dragged him outside the vineyard, and killed him. Now, our lords remember, this is a parable. Now, our lord says, what do you suppose the owner of that vineyard will do to those tenants when he comes back? They replied, well, he will bring that wicked crowd to a bad end and then lease his vineyard to other tenants who will see to it that he has his share of the grapes at vintage time.
Then our lord said to them, to the scribes and the leaders of the people, did you never read in the old test well, the scriptures. The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone of the building. It was the lord who did this, and we find it marvelous to behold. Of course, that's a quotation from the Old Testament, which our lord could suppose that these scribes and the leaders of the people knew very well as indeed they did. So then our lord continues.
For this reason, I tell you, the kingdom of god will be taken away from you and given to a nation that will yield a rich harvest. Could you see anything clearer than that? Now when when the chief priests and the pharisees heard these parables, they gathered that he was talking about them. How could they miss it? Although they sought to arrest Jesus, they had reason to fear the crowds who regarded Jesus as a prophet, which of course they didn't.
The gospel of the lord. Have five minutes. I want you to recall those three talks I gave Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They all emphasized the positive because the basic fact is, the truth is that all virtue is positive. It's not a negation.
It's not an abstaining. It is doing something, something. And the word thing in Latin is res for which we get the word reality. Now today's gospel is very important because I said, we God created me, created you individually. You have a name.
You're not anonymous. You're not society. You're not a community. You're not a congregation. You are an individual human being.
You have your own set of fingerprints. You have your own unique ear. You have some other things that are personally yours. We call you an individual, and god created me an individual. He didn't create me a community.
He I need community, but he didn't make me a community. Now so god created me to go back to him. Those actions which I do such as chastity and the virtue of charity and prudence justice, fortitude, and temperance, all these fine things, they lead us back to god. But the trouble with life is, are there so many goodies to pick from? I marry one woman or one woman marries one man, but after a few years, we see other good people who are more likely to fulfill me and all that kind of thing.
Remember, we never choose evil. Any choice we make, we make under the under the appearance of the good. I may make a mistake about what is good, but the point is I choose it under the aspect of the good. That's old man Aristotle and Saint Thomas, Aquinas. So that I never make a choice under this the aspect of the good.
But the point is I have many goods facing me, and some of those goods that I choose deflect me from going back to god. Because for one reason or another, I'm bound, obligated by god to make certain choices among the good things. It isn't that any of them are evil. No thing is evil. Emphasis, thing.
So what's gonna guide me in making that my choice among all these good things? I'm like a kid, you know, in the candy shop. All the goodies, but I only have $1 to spend. It used to be 1p, you know. Now we need help.
And then now we bring in something that we call the fall. God didn't create me to choose evil. That's ridiculous. I never choose evil. As such, never.
The worst criminal does it. Now I need help to go back to god, and that's where today's parable comes in. First, the the owner sent some slaves. They treated them, mistreated them. They he sets he sends a second batch of them, a bunch of them, and they wind up killing some of them.
And then he sends his only son. Who is this? A parable. They kill him. That's where we are.
We have a we need Christ. We need Jesus Christ the savior. You see, god is way out there. You can't imagine god. You can't talk about god.
You can't use words about god. That's all anthropomorphic. It's making god like a man. But Christ is a man, born of a woman. He is one of us.
You can't be anthropomorphic about Jesus Christ. And so we must cultivate an appreciation, a knowledge. We must have information about our redeemer, Jesus Christ because it is he who helps us, who brings us, who supports us, without whom we can do nothing. That's what he said. Without me, you can do nothing.
So if I'm bound to go back to my heavenly father and I can do nothing, then I sure have to go to Christ and say, lord, here I am at your feet. I know I can do nothing. You've gotta send me on my way, and Jesus does it. But where is Jesus in the year of our lord 1993, this Friday morning? Where is Jesus?
He's in his living church. Speaking with an articulate voice. He's speaking through Peter on this rock. I'll build my church. Who hears you, hears me.
That's where Jesus is. And let me give you just two little thoughts. You remember the story when on one side of the lake our lord performed all kinds of miracles, then he got in a boat with his disciples that were rowing back to Capernaum across the lake. They're going from east to west. The storms come down from the north.
These are small boats, maybe 18 feet long or less. And there's and these storms are violent. And the and the and the apostles, remember, they were they were watermen, but they were scared to death. So they looked to Jesus for help. And you know what he's doing?
He's asleep. And there they are fearing for their lives, and the lord, their savior's asleep. So they wake him up. He said they said, don't you care anything about us? And he said, oh, ye of little faith.
Now apply that to the blessed sacrament, to the real presence of Jesus. Have you any physical evidence from that host that there's a Christ, the son of god around? You surely do not. Yet you bow your knee and you say, my lord and my god. That's an act of faith.
That's not the that's not a deduction from some kind of experience or an induction of an from uniformity of nature or something. This is a tremendous act of faith. And just as those disciples in that boat that they thought was going to sink from the turbulence of the winds coming down from the north raising all kinds of waves, and they Christ is asleep as if he didn't give a darn about them. And we look at our lord in that little white wafer, and he seems asleep without a care for us. Isn't that the truth?
And it but what it matters is the whole world there. It's the whole world because we say, lord, don't you have a care for me? Don't you think of me? And as old Thomas said, my lord and my god, I believe, not trust, I believe in you. Help thou my own belief.
And that's the church speaking to you daily. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.