Archive for October 3, 2020

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Posted: October 3, 2020 by CatholicJules in Sunday Reflections
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Living on the Vine: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings:
Isaiah 5:1–7
Psalm 80:9, 12–16, 19–20
Philippians 4:6–9
Matthew 21:33–43
 

In today’s Gospel Jesus returns to the Old Testament symbol of the vineyard to teach about Israel, the Church, and the kingdom of God.

And the symbolism of today’s First Reading and Psalm is readily understood.
God is the owner and the house of Israel is the vineyard. A cherished vine, Israel was plucked from Egypt and transplanted in a fertile land specially spaded and prepared by God, hedged about by the city walls of Jerusalem, watched over by the towering Temple. But the vineyard produced no good grapes for the wine, a symbol for the holy lives God wanted for His people. So God allowed His vineyard to be overrun by foreign invaders, as Isaiah foresees in the First Reading.
Jesus picks up the story where Isaiah leaves off, even using Isaiah’s words to describe the vineyard’s wine press, hedge, and watchtower. Israel’s religious leaders, the tenants in His parable, have learned nothing from Isaiah or Israel’s past. Instead of producing good fruits, they’ve killed the owner’s servants, the prophets sent to gather the harvest of faithful souls.

In a dark foreshadowing of His own crucifixion outside Jerusalem, Jesus says the tenants’ final outrage will be to seize the owner’s son, and to kill him outside the vineyard walls.

For this, the vineyard, which Jesus calls the kingdom of God, will be taken away and given to new tenants—the leaders of the Church, who will produce its fruit.

We are each a vine in the Lord’s vineyard, grafted onto the true vine of Christ (see John 15:1–8), called to bear fruits of the righteousness in Him (see Philippians 1:11) and to be the “first fruits” of a new creation (see James 1:18).

We need to take care that we don’t let ourselves be overgrown with the thorns and briers of worldly anxiety. As today’s Epistle advises, we need to fill our hearts and minds with noble intentions and virtuous deeds, rejoicing always that the Lord is near.

On Today’s Gospel

Posted: October 3, 2020 by CatholicJules in Personal Thoughts & Reflections
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Too many times I have let my pride blind me to Your infinite wisdom and Your glory. It was far easier to simply declare that I am only human and to do as I pleased; rather than strive through the challenges of remaining connected to the vine of life, my Lord and saviour Jesus Christ!

Dwelling on Today’s readings, and in Your presence has opened my eyes to see that all the different hats I wear in life has only one creator. As such in each one and every one, I must endeavour to glorify You. As I ponder more deeply, I realise that the most joyful I have ever been in my life was always in humble service of You and my brethren. Why  have I not guarded this memory and held on tightly to it, instead of allowing it to be robbed from me through temptation, distraction and sin.  I have been complacent indeed, in my prayers and in my spiritual life when it should be ever thriving and fruitful.

Lord I am wise only in Your wisdom, am fully alive only in Your presence, grant me the grace to remain steadfast in Your love and to always be attentive to Your Will for me. Amen

First reading
Job 42:1-3,5-6,12-17
In dust and in ashes I repent

This was the answer Job gave to the Lord:

I know that you are all-powerful:what you conceive, you can perform.
I am the man who obscured your design with my empty-headed words.
I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond me and my knowledge.
I knew you then only by hearsay; but now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent.

The Lord blessed Job’s new fortune even more than his first one. He came to own fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she-donkeys. He had seven sons and three daughters; his first daughter he called ‘Turtledove’, the second ‘Cassia’ and the third ‘Mascara.’ Throughout the land there were no women as beautiful as the daughters of Job. And their father gave them inheritance rights like their brothers.
    After his trials, Job lived on until he was a hundred and forty years old, and saw his children and his children’s children up to the fourth generation. Then Job died, an old man and full of days.


Gospel
Luke 10:17-24
Rejoice that your names are written in heaven

The seventy-two came back rejoicing. ‘Lord,’ they said ‘even the devils submit to us when we use your name.’ He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Yes, I have given you power to tread underfoot serpents and scorpions and the whole strength of the enemy; nothing shall ever hurt you. Yet do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you; rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.’
    It was then that, filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, he said:
    ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
    Then turning to his disciples he spoke to them in private, ‘Happy the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.’