Jesus
said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: "Hear another
parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it,
dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and
went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the
tenants to obtain his produce. But the tenants seized the servants and one they
beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again he sent other
servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same
way. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, 'They will respect my son.'
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, 'This is the heir.
Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ They seized him, threw him
out of the vineyard, and killed him. What will the owner of the vineyard do to
those tenants when he comes?" They answered him, "He will put those
wret-ched men to a wret-ched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who
will give him the produce at the proper times." Jesus said to them,
"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? Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be
taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit."
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Reflection:
In what
instance/s in our lives does Jesus knocks in our hearts? It’s when He wants to
get closer to us, Jesus does this to us in so many ways. For example through a
friend who may want to share the words of Jesus to us. It may be through a
written commentary about life and our faith in Jesus that may deeply awaken us.
It may be through important events in our lives such as sickness even problems.
Some of
us may listen to this knocks of Jesus and we open our hearts to Him and change
our lives for the better. But many of us may not listen and may not even give careful reflection about this. Thus, we move-on with our lives as if nothing
significant has happened to us. We continue to distance ourselves from Jesus or
we continue to treat Jesus like a medicine that we only take when we are in
need.
In our
gospel for this Sunday Jesus gives us the Parable of the tenants. The tenants were allowed by the landlord to take care of his vineyard. When it was harvest time already of course the landlord
was realistically asking for his share because the land was his property.
So the
landlord sent two batches of servants but the tenants greedily refused the
demand of the landlord by killing some of the servants that he sent them.
Finally the landlord sent his only son thinking that the tenants would now
listen to him but they killed him as well.
The
greedy tenants in the gospel are the chief priest and the elders, the landlord
is God. The servants that God sent were the prophets and the only son is Jesus
whom they have killed as well. The reason they did this to the prophets and
Jesus is they disliked their call of renewal and repentance.
In some
ways we also take the role of the greedy tenants because we continue to
greedily love this world more than Jesus. Many of us may have already fell in
love with what this world offers us that we refuse Jesus' demand of repentance. We
continue to refuse to listen to His voice that asks us that we let go
of all of our sinfulness.
Nevertheless,
Jesus is still persistently knocking on the door of our hearts. Patiently
waiting for us to open it so that He could come-in, defeat all our sins and
take control of our lives. - Marino J. Dasmarinas
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