God’s Vineyard

Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

This Sunday, my beloved brethren, the Church has appointed to be read from the Gospel the parable of a certain householder who planted a vineyard, and of the vinedressers to whom the householder entrusted his vineyard. The vineyard was arranged magnificently, with everything belonging to it, with a winepress, on excellent ground enclosed by a fence; but the vinedressers turned out to be exceedingly crafty and wicked, and not only did they fail to give the owner his fruits at the appointed time, but they even beat the servants whom the owner sent, or outright killed them and stoned them, and finally they killed the owner’s only son as well. By the householder is meant God the Father; by the vineyard, the Jewish Church; by the vinedressers, the chief priests, priests, and rulers, to whom the Jewish Church was entrusted; by the servants are understood the prophets, whom God sent more than once to the Jewish people and who for the most part were killed by the Jews; by the son of the householder is meant the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. But this parable, brethren, applies not to the Jews alone; it applies to us as well, it concerns us too. By the Lord’s vineyard may and must be understood every Christian soul as well; by the fence, the Law of God, by which every soul is fenced off, or ought to be fenced off, from sins; the winepress or press in the vineyard is our heart, or our inward parts, by which we receive the most pure Blood of the Lamb of God, who was slain for us; by the tower or upper room is understood the Church of Christ, or the grace of the Holy Spirit acting in the Church, establishing our hearts in faith and love and good works and raising us from earth to heaven, as it is said: Set your mind on the things above, not on the things on the earth[1].

So then, the vineyard of God is all of us, brethren. And a vineyard ought to bring forth abundant fruit; do we bring to the Lord, our supreme Vinegrower, the fruits of good deeds, the fruits of repentance, faith, love, humility, meekness, goodness, mercy, temperance, purity, patience and longsuffering, and the other virtues? Very, very little do we bring, and sometimes nothing at all—but we bring the fruits of the wild vine, the vine of Sodom and Gomorrah, that is, all kinds of defiled deeds: pride, malice, envy, greed, fornication, adultery, drunkenness, unbelief, godlessness, murder and suicide. The Lord waits from us for the fruits of repentance, of amendment, of virtue—and often waits in vain: we remain the same sinners, the same barren, withered trees that we were. Many Christians violate and kill their conscience, that servant of God in our soul, and give themselves over to lawlessness without fear; many justify their sins, or excuse themselves by the weakness of nature or by the needs of fallen sinful nature, failing to distinguish their whims or lusts from real needs. Many are not even ashamed to slander the Gospel, saying that it supposedly demands the impossible, and they live entirely contrary to it; and thus, like the Jewish chief priests and scribes, they crucify the Son of God a second time within themselves. But why speak indefinitely: many crucify the Son of God? — We ourselves often crucify the Son of God within ourselves—by our little faith, by our malices, envy, intemperance, gluttony, drunkenness, the impurity of our heart, negligence, impenitence, laziness and other vices. What, then, will the owner of our vineyard—run wild and overgrown through our own negligence—do, when He comes to demand an account of our deeds, of all our impurities and malices? The answer is the same one that the chief priests and scribes pronounced against themselves: He will put those evildoers to an evil death, and will give the vineyard over to other vinedressers; that is, He will give the greatest gift of faith and grace to other people, who will bring Him fruits in their seasons—that is, who will, by the help of grace, make constant progress in every virtue, all the days of their life.

So then, brethren, while the Lord gives us time, while the soul is still in the body and our vineyard has not yet been taken from us—let us watch over it diligently, cultivate it, water it with the rain of tears, cleanse it with repentance, so that it may bring forth more fruit. Amen.