Of all the parables Our Lord ever told, this one of the wicked tenants in the vineyard is the one that most closely takes his audience back to the Old Testament. He was speaking to the Chief Priests and the elders of the people, the elite of society. They knew very well the text from Isaiah which we heard as the first reading. The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, said Isaiah at the end of his story – and the men of Judah are that chosen plant, that vine. The Lord expected justice from them, says Isaiah, but he found only bloodshed, and instead of integrity, a cry of distress.
Of course the chief priests and elders knew this text. But they never thought of it as applying to themselves. It was written hundreds of years earlier by Isaiah to express the prophet's disgust at the behaviour of his own contemporaries. Through the mouthpiece of His prophet, God was upbraiding the religious leaders of Isaiah's day. They had proved unfaithful to God. They had turned against the covenant. They had persecuted the true prophets.
But the chief priests and elders of the people in our Lord's day had no such fears. They were sure of themselves. They were not guilty as their predecessors in Isaiah's day had been. So when Our Lord told this parable, which is so clearly based on Isaiah's story, they were furious because they knew He meant it against themselves. Our Lord was accusing them of being as unfaithful as the Jewish leaders of Isaiah's generation. But there is an even deeper twist. Where Isaiah only speaks of the owner's disappointment at the poor produce, Our Lord intensifies the story by adding the detail of the servants whom the Master of the vineyard sends to collect his produce. When the tenants mistreat wave after wave of these He decides in the end to send his own son, saying “they will respect my son”. Yet it is this realisation that brings out the very worst in the tenants. They conspire to kill the landowner's son and steal his inheritance from the landowner. What greater treachery could there be?
When Our Lord therefore asks the chief priests and elders what they think the landowner will do in response to this wicked crime, they have no choice but to say that “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will deliver the produce when the season arrives.” There is no other suitable answer, for to say anything less would be to deny the truth of what Isaiah had said the Lord would do. In this way they lay themselves open to Our Lord's final reproof: “I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”
How little human nature changes! Two thousand years on, just like the chief priests and the elders of our Lord's day, we hear a parable like this and think of it as addressed to people long since dead. It was indeed fulfilled in those days as Our Lord had said: after His death and resurrection, the Apostles were charged to go out to the whole world and preach the good news, baptising in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this way, as St Paul teaches us, the Catholic Faith was brought to pagans like our own ancestors as a direct result of the unfaithfulness of the Jews of Our Lord's day.
Yet what God has done once, He can surely do again. Why did He turn away from His chosen people, at least enough to ensure that the Gospel was brought into the rest of the heathen world? Because of their self- reliance, and their refusal to listen to the voice of Christ calling them to repentance and to produce the fruits of God's goodness to them.
How can we be sure that the same cannot happen again? All around us we see the terrible signs of our faith dying like an old tree. Branches wither away and fall off a tree as it nears death, and the trunk decays and dies away. Such seems is the faith in our own times in our own part of the world. How terrible it is to see churches emptying and closing, to see vocations to the priesthood and religious life falling off. Less than a year ago the church of St Teresa in Parkfields was demolished, having been closed for some time. Only two weeks ago we were told the sad news that the three Pauline Fathers at Snow Hill are to return to their native Poland to help shore up their order, even there falling ever shorter of vocations, which means that St Mary’s and John’s, the Church of my baptism and ordination to the priesthood, which was once the home of the auxiliary bishop of the diocese, will for the first time in its 170 year history not even have one resident priest. With stark evidence like this, we cannot presume that all we have been bequeathed by our ancestors who struggled so hard to keep the faith in far harder times, will survive. If it does so, it can only do so by our own sacrifices and faithfulness. Every generation faces its own challenge. Ours is a challenge of faith and generosity of spirit, and self-dedication to Christ and His Church.
In one sense, even with fewer priests year by year, it is still very easy to practice the faith today. Even now we still have so many opportunities, and I don't simply mean going to Mass. Think of all the opportunities we have to adore the Blessed Sacrament, to go to confession, to pick up and read good literature that helps us to learn about our faith. Think also of the opportunities we have to do good: to do voluntary work: to care for the sick, housebound and needy, to show our support in the campaign for life against the increasing pressure of the culture of death, in abortion and euthanasia. If we do not stand up to be counted, who will? If we do not know about our faith, how can we tell others? If we do not show our love of our faith by making real sacrifices, how can we expect the next generation to do so? Without our sacrifices, where then will the next generation of priests come from of not from families who come to Mass now? Where will the next generation of sisters come from? And where will the next generation of Mass-goers come from, if not from our families and from our example of determined faithfulness?
Nor are we allowed to be fatalists and simply assume that all is lost, or soon will be. There's something that I want to bring to your attention, and especially in this month of October. In just over a week’s time we will celebrate the anniversary of our Lady's final appearance at Fatima on 13th October 1917, at which was seen by tens of thousands of people the most extraordinary miracle of the dance of the sun. Not only believers, but sceptics and atheists alike saw this miraculous sign by which Our Lady had promised to prove the authenticity of her message to Lucia, and her cousins, St Jacinta and St Francisco. And the one thing that Our Lady said constantly during those extraordinary months at Fatima, each time she visited the children, was, 'pray the Rosary'. Pray the Rosary! This month, this year, is the time to heed our Lady's call once more, and to put into practice the one thing she asked of us all then: to pray the Rosary every day. If we truly wish to grow in faith, and to bear the fruits our Lord is looking for from us, then the things that will produce that fruit are adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the Rosary. Each Sunday here at Carmel there is exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the afternoon until Vespers. Or go to St Michael’s on Monday evenings for adoration from 5.45 p.m. until Mass which begins at 6.30. It's the sacrifices we make now that will, by God's grace and our Lady's prayers, eventually produce the fruit of a new generation of zealous, practising Catholics, of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and of churches thronged with lively and reverent congregations of the faithful.
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