Parable of the Murderous Vintners

4 October 2020 | Saint Peter’s Square

In today’s Gospel passage (cf. Mt 21:33-43) Jesus, foreseeing his passion and death, tells the parable of the murderous vintners, to admonish the chief priests and elders of the people who are about to take the wrong path. Indeed, they have bad intentions towards him and are seeking a way to eliminate him.

The allegorical story describes a landowner who, after having taken great care of his vineyard (cf. v. 33), had to depart and leave it in the hands of farmers. Then, at harvest time, he sends some servants to collect the fruit; but the tenants welcome the servants with a beating, and some even kill them. The householder sends other servants, more numerous, but they receive the same treatment (cf. vv. 34-36). The peak is reached when the landowner decides to send his son: the vinegrowers have no respect for him; on the contrary, they think that by eliminating him they can take over the vineyard, and so they kill him too (cf. vv. 37-39).

The image of the vineyard is clear: it represents the people whom the Lord has chosen and formed with such care; the servants sent by the landowner are the prophets, sent by God, while the son represents Jesus. And just as the prophets were rejected, so too Christ was rejected and killed.

At the end of the story, Jesus asks the leaders of the people: “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (v. 40). And, caught up in the logic of the narrative, they deliver their own sentence: the householder, they say, will severely punish those wicked people and “let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons” (v. 41). 

With this very harsh parable, Jesus confronts his interlocutors with their responsibility, and he does so with extreme clarity. But let us not think that this admonition applies only to those who rejected Jesus at that time. It applies to all times, including our own. Even today God awaits the fruits of his vineyard from those he has sent to work in it. All of us.

In any age, those who have authority, any authority, also in the Church, in the People of God, may be tempted to work in their own interests instead of those of God. And Jesus says that true authority is when one…

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Parable of the Tenants

8 October 2017 | Saint Peter’s Square

This Sunday’s liturgy offers us the parable of the tenants to whom a landowner lends the vineyard which he has planted, and then goes away (cf. Mt 21:33-43). This is how the loyalty of these tenants is tested: the vineyard is entrusted to them, they are to tend it, make it bear fruit and deliver its harvest to the owner. When the time comes to harvest the grapes, the landlord sends his servants to pick the fruit. However, the vineyard tenants assume a possessive attitude. They do not consider themselves to be simple supervisors, but rather landowners, and they refuse to hand over the harvest. They mistreat the servants, to the point of killing them. The landowner is patient with them. He sends more servants, larger in number than the previous ones, but the result is the same. In the end, he patiently decides to send his own son. But those tenants, prisoners to their own possessive behaviour, also kill the son, reasoning that, in this way, they would have the inheritance.

This narrative allegorically illustrates the reproaches of the prophets in the story of Israel. It is a history that belongs to us. It is about the Covenant which God wished to establish with mankind and in which he also called us to participate. Like any other love story, this story of the Covenant has its positive moments too, but it is also marked by betrayal and rejection. In order to make us understand how God the Father responds to the rejection of his love and his proposal of an alliance, the Gospel passage puts a question on the lips of the owner of the vineyard: “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (v. 40). This question emphasizes that God’s disappointment at the wicked behaviour of mankind is not the last word! This is the great novelty of Christianity: a God who, even though disappointed by our mistakes and our sins, does not fail to keep his Word, does not give up and, most of all, does not seek vengeance!

My brothers and sisters, God does not avenge himself. God loves, he does not avenge himself. He waits for us to forgive us, to embrace us. Through the “rejected stones” — and Christ is the first stone that the builders rejected — through situations of weakness and sin, God continues to circulate “the new wine” of his vineyard, namely mercy. This is the new wine of the Lord’s vineyard: mercy. There is only one obstacle to the tenacious and tender will of God…

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5 October 2014 | Saint Peter’s Square

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On the Anniversary of the Death of Pope John Paul I

21 September 2008 | Papal Summer Residence, Castel Gandolfo

Today the liturgy presents to us the Gospel parable of the two sons sent by their father to work in his vineyard. One of them immediately agrees to go but then does not; the other instead refuses but later repents and complies with his father’s wishes. With this parable Jesus reaffirms his predilection for sinners who convert and teaches us that humility is necessary in order to accept the gift of salvation. St Paul too, in the passage from his Letter to the Philippians on which we are meditating today, urges us to be humble: “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit”, he writes, “but… let each of you… in humility count others better than yourselves” (Phil 2: 3). These are the same sentiments as those of Christ who, emptying himself of divine glory out of love for us, became a man and humbled himself even to dying on a Cross (cf. Phil 2: 5-8). The verb used – ekenôsen – means literally that he “emptied himself” and sheds clear light on the deep humility and infinite love of Jesus, the humble Servant par excellence. 

In reflecting on these biblical texts, I immediately thought of Pope John Paul I, the 30th anniversary of whose death we are commemorating today. John Paul I chose as his episcopal motto the same motto as St Charles Borromeo, namely: Humilitas. This single word sums up the essential of Christian life and indicates the indispensable virtue of those in the Church who are called to the service of authority. At one of the four General Audiences held during his extremely short Pontificate, he said, among other things, with that familiar tone that distinguished him: “I will just recommend one virtue so dear to the Lord. He said, “Learn from me who am meek and humble of heart’…. Even if you have done great things, say: “We are useless servants'”. And he observed: “On the contrary the tendency in all of us, is rather the opposite: to show off” (Homily, General Audience, 6 September 1978). Humility can be considered his spiritual testament. 

Because of this virtue of his, it only took 33 days for Pope Luciani to win people’s hearts. In his Addresses he always referred to events in practical life, from his family memories and from popular wisdom. His simplicity was a vehicle for a solid, rich teaching which, thanks to the gift of an exceptional memory and a vast knowledge, he embellished with numerous citations from ecclesiastical and secular writers. Thus, he was an incomparable catechist, following in the footsteps of St Pius X, who came from the same region and was his Predecessor first on the throne of St Mark and then on that of St Peter. “We must feel small before God”, he said during the same Audience. And he added, “I am not ashamed to feel like a child before his mother; one believes in one’s mother; I believe in the Lord, in what he has revealed to me” (ibid., p. 1). These words reveal the full depth of his faith. As we thank God for having given him to the Church and to the world, let us treasure his example, striving to cultivate his same humility which enabled him to talk to everyone, especially the small and the “distant”. For this, let us invoke Mary Most Holy, the humble Handmaid of the Lord. 

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The Lord’s Vineyard

Tuesday, 16 December 1997 | ADVENT MASS FOR THE STUDENTS
OF THE ROMAN STATE UNIVERSITIES

2. The Word of God proclaimed a few moments ago refers to the Lord’s vineyard, an evocative allegory that occurs frequently in the Gospels and is the main theme of today’s passage. What does the image of the vineyard call to mind? Following the Gospel texts, we could say that it represents the whole created cosmos which, through Christ’s coming, becomes God’s property in a special way. In fact, through Christ’s Redemption, the cosmos and man begin to belong to God in a new way. We can therefore say that in a certain sense Christmas is the holy day when the visible and the inanimate assume, on the basis of that event, a different and unexpected meaning, because “God”, as the Evangelist John reminds us, “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). Do not these words contain the pregnant meaning of the vineyard image, to which Jesus often refers in his preaching? 

Through the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, man and the cosmos can rejoice in discovering that it is they who are the “Lord’s vineyard”, the object of God’s saving love.

3. “Go and work in my vineyard!” (cf. Mt 21:28), says the father to his two sons in the Gospel parable, and he expects an answer from them: he is not satisfied with words; he wants an actual commitment. The two respond differently: the first says he is willing but then does nothing; the other apparently refuses his father’s invitation, but after some evasiveness does what he is asked. The Evangelist Matthew thus presents a typology of the attitudes towards God that men have taken down through history. The Gospel invitation to work in the Lord’s vineyard echoes in the lives and hearts of every man and woman, called to dedicate themselves actively to the divine vineyard and to become involved in the mission of salvation. In this parable each one of us can recognize his own personal experience. 

4. Dear friends, the university world you represent here is a particularly fertile ground for the development of the human talents which the Lord has given each individual for the good of all. By using them and developing them through study and research, whoever possesses them is capable of undertaking initiatives that can promote the authentic progress of the world. 

However, as the Second Vatican Council reminds us, “the advantages of human progress are fraught with grave temptations: the hierarchy of values has been disordered, good and evil intermingle, and every man and every group is interested only in its own affairs, not in those of others. So it is that the earth has not yet become the scene of true brotherhood; rather, man’s swelling power at the present time threatens to put an end to the human race itself” (Gaudium et spes, n. 37). 

5. Only when man, letting himself be guided by the divine Spirit, undertakes to enliven earthly affairs in view of God’s kingdom (cf. ibid., n. 72), does he co-operate in bringing about the authentic progress of humanity. By fostering the encounter with the Son of the living God, it is the Spirit who removes from man’s heart every intellectual presumption and leads him to the true good and to true wisdom, which is a gift to be sought and received with humility. As I wrote in the Letter to the Young People of Rome for the City Mission – it is up to you, dear young people, to listen to the Spirit of the Lord in order to release the fresh, generous cultural energies that the enthusiasm of your age can certainly muster. The Pope entrusts this task especially to you, as your vocation and service on the journey of preparation for the Great Jubilee of the third millennium. 

It corresponds, moreover, to the fitting efforts of the Italian Church to develop and make fruitful a cultural project with a Christian orientation.

Knowledge based on faith, in fact, has genuine cultural dignity. Knowledge of the faith illumines man’s search and makes it fully human because “it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh” as the Second Vatican Council teaches, “that the mystery of man truly becomes clear…. Christ, the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (ibid., n. 22).

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