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27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
If I were to summarize what the readings were about today, it would be this: God’s people have been poor tenants in the Lord’s vineyard. We are often given the vineyard as a symbol in the bible. The vineyard is the place where the drama plays out. This is the Lord’s garden and we are merely tenants. We are to preserve and protect the vineyard and pass it on to future generations. The danger is that we forget our collective responsibility and we end up with everyone out for their own gain. We see that drama played out in the world stage today. Every foreign policy of every country is all about their attempt to gain advantage on the world stage. We are paying a terrible price for our insular vision. Now people are taking to the streets to protest about global warming. Something must be done about it. But who is going to begin to change. Who is willing to get rid of their too many cars and their gas guzzlers? Everyone says you can’t live in Texas without a car. Can we afford to justify ourselves in this way? Austin is still talking about Light Rail. I expect it will keep on talking for a long time. What company is willing to invest from their profits to produce clean energy? I suspect like in most things we would like someone else to take the initiative. I expect that global warming will advance and we will wait until it is too late to do anything about it. Goodbye to condos in New York and Florida. Politically we have not minded the vineyard very well either. We have sat idly by and watched the extremists prance about the stage. It is like pulling teeth to get anyone to step forward to protect the world’s peace. Ebola is having a great in Africa and I don’t see much of a world response to deal with that either. The ancient tale of the workers in the vineyard is still our tale today. The Lord God gave us from His bounty. He gifted us with our own Promised Land and we are destroying it. We are the ones allowing this wonderful place to go to rack and ruin. Instead of producing wonderful grapes we have been producing sour grapes. God sent his messengers already and history rejected them. We have those same messengers today trying to proclaim peace and harmony. We send a few spin doctors to their domain and before you know it they are belittled and made shallow. God is concerned about his people. God is concerned about his vineyard. Why aren’t we?
With love, Fr. Pat