A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 6, n. 45)
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – October 5, 2008
“The Mystery of Divine Expectations”
BIBLE READINGS
Is 5:1-7 // Phil 4:6-9 // Mt 21:33-43
(N.B. Series 6 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year A from the perspective of the First Reading. For another set of reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year A, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US and open Series 3.)
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
This Sunday’s liturgy continues to assure us that the ways of God are just. But it also underlines that the people who are the object of his benevolence are disappointing for they do not always respond to his caring love. In the Old Testament reading (Is 5:1-7) we hear Isaiah’s “Song of the Vineyard” and the sad tones of a disappointed vineyard cultivator who laments the low quality of the grapes produced at the harvest. His best efforts to produce high quality grapes failed. The “Song of the Vineyard” is a metaphor of God’s unrequited love and goodness for his people. It sums up the whole drama of sacred history: God’s faithful love and the people’s infidelity and negation of that love.
The biblical scholar Eugene Maly comments: “God is love, and he has first shown his love for us … While God loves us with an unfathomable love that will never be withdrawn, still that love must be accepted and responded to by us. If there is no response manifested in our lives, then we have made a mockery of God’s love for us … Isaiah’s canticle of the rejected lover is surely to the point. All that the owner did for his vineyard is depicted in aching words to emphasize the tremendous love of God for his people. And yet the vineyard (Israel) brought forth only wild grapes. There was nothing for God to do but punish her.”
Indeed, Israel’s election to be a holy nation carried with it an obligation to mirror God’s goodness to the nations of the world. Unfortunately, the chosen people did not produce fruits of justice and holiness. Their wealth and prosperity did not produce a just society, but merely insolence and idolatry. The threat of the destruction of God’s privileged vineyard was literally fulfilled with the Assyrian invasion of idolatrous Israel.
The theme of God’s unrequited love and frustrated expectations appears even more dramatically in this Sunday’s Gospel reading (Mt 21:33-43). Just as the unfaithful Israel, symbolized by the unfruitful vineyard in Isaiah’s “Song of the Vineyard”, disappointed greatly the caring God so did the false leaders of Israel at the time of Jesus, signified by the wicked tenants in the Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard. The rebellious tenants refused to give to the owner of the vineyard the produce due to him. Moreover, the disappointment was extreme when his beloved son, a figure of Jesus Christ, was attacked and killed.
Cardinal Jean Danielou explicates: “God’s patience has been strained to its farthest limit in this tragedy of Christ, the Lord of the vineyard’s own son, rejected by the husbandmen, crucified, treated by his own people as a stranger and an outcast. But from the lowest depths arises a sudden hope. The tragedy of Good Friday, when Israel rejected him that was sent, becomes in God’s plan the means whereby the vine planted in Israel was to break out in a new and vigorous growth. In fact, it was to bring forth for the first time the fruit expected of it. Now through the passion and resurrection of Christ stems the true and fruitful vine (…) Then the true vine appeared, in the person of Jesus Christ. The grace of God bears its plenitude of fruit in him … The human nature brings forth this incomparable harvest of holiness. The response, which the people of Israel had never been able to give, is now given in perfection by God himself in the manhood of Christ, the seed of Israel. All God’s pleasure is in Jesus Christ, his everlasting vine, the eternal source of satisfaction without end.” Indeed, from the paschal mystery of Christ, the true vine, bud forth the full fruits of justice and redemption that were pleasing to God.
The following story of the tragic end of Clark gives us an inkling of how unfortunate it is to waste away the graces and opportunities showered upon us by God (cf. Mike McGarvin, PAPA MIKE, Fresno, 2003, p. 102-105)
Life at Poverello House is always interesting. You never knew who might be coming through the door. I think it’s safe to say that the majority of homeless people we’ve met had been born into poverty; often the addicts and alcoholics were products of homes in which their parents abused booze and drugs. Sometimes, though, we’d run across someone who had fallen from great heights. Clark showed up somewhere around 1987 or 1988. Although disheveled like a typical homeless person, he possessed a sort of faded elegance. He piqued my curiosity; I didn’t need to strike up a conversation, however, because he buttonholed me and started talking. Once he started, he rarely stopped. Clark claimed that he came from an upper Arizona family, that he had hobnobbed with Barry Goldwater and other prominent people, and that he had been C.E.O. of a local hospital. Yeah, sure, I thought. I was shocked to find out it was all true. It got stranger. My wife brought out her birth certificate one day, and there was Clark’s signature. It turned out that he was one of the most successful leaders in the hospital’s history. On top of that, he had been appointed to a special health care commission by then-Governor Ronald Reagan. He had been a hero in the Pacific Theater of World War II, a well-loved commander of a PT boat. He had at one time been a dashing, handsome member of Fresno’s elite, written about in society’s columns.
What had happened? As time went on, I got to know his ex-wife and one of his sons. At its simplest level, Clark had a booze problem. When he hit the streets, he was drinking prodigious amounts of alcohol. On an average day, he’d have a fifth or more of hard liquor, as well as several bottles of beer and wine. His drinking had been going on for years, and I don’t know when it started getting out of control. What I do know is that his descent was gradual. After leaving as C.E.O. of the hospital, he had several lesser jobs in the health care industry, each one a step down from the last. He had many friends, often ex-employees, and they cushioned his fall for years. Finally, however, his life was so unmanageable that he hit the skids. (…)
Clark continued to live on the streets and drink. Amazingly, he kept going, even though he was now in his eighties and could barely walk because of edema in his ankles. He got around all over town with his shopping cart full of rotting food and junk. His looks and behavior got more bizarre as time went on. (…)
He gradually came less and less to Poverello. I got a call from his ex-wife one day; he was in the V.A. Hospital, and didn’t look good. I went up to visit him. It had been a while since I’d seen him, and he couldn’t talk because of all the tubes hooked up to him. It was the first conversation I had with him in which I was able to get a word in edgewise. I talked uninterrupted for a long time; I knew he’d be checking out soon, and I wanted to leave him with some words of comfort. I told him I’d pray for him. He could hear me, and he formed his eyes into a squint, but I’m not sure what he was trying to convey. The next day I got a call – Clark had died. He was a unique, talented man who had once had it all. He left behind broken family members who are still, to this day, trying to make sense of his life.
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
What are the painful and poignant themes in Isaiah’s “Song of the Vineyard”? What is tragic about being an “unfruitful vine”? What is the personal lesson of the “Song of the Vineyard” for us?
Why is the Gospel of today an echo of Isaiah’s “Song of the Vineyard”? Why is God’s disappointment intense with regards to the chosen people he loves? How is the mystery of divine expectations fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the fruitful vine?
How do we respond to the challenge to be a “fruitful vine”?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: O loving God,
we thank you for the care you lavished upon your people Israel,
the living vine transplanted from Egypt.
You cultivated it as a privileged vineyard
to make it bear fruits of justice, holiness and love.
As a community of Christian disciples,
we are today’s new vine and vineyard.
However, as Church, the new Israel,
we have not responded fully to our vocation of fruitfulness.
Merciful Lord,
we regret the disappointing yield
and the unfruitful harvest of goodness in our lives.
Above all, we lament the self-destruction
that results from the negation of your life-giving love.
O compassionate Father,
your ways are wise and just.
From the tragedy of sin and rebellion
and from the passion and death of your Son Jesus Christ,
the fruitfulness of the vineyard – Church – was mysteriously achieved.
We give you thanks for sending us your Son Jesus as our Savior.
In his paschal sacrifice on the cross, the tree of life,
the full fruits of justice and redemption were brought forth,
ready for harvesting by all the peoples of the earth.
In your beloved Son, the everlasting vine,
we sing the “Song of the Fruitful Vineyard”.
O merciful Father,
graft us intimately into the Eucharistic vine Jesus Christ,
the font of healing, justice and love,
now and forever.
Assembly: Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?” (Is 5:4a)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
ACTION PLAN: Pray that today’s Christian disciples may be fruitful in producing acts of charity, justice and goodness. Endeavor to spend quiet moments of prayer with Jesus in his sacred Word and the Eucharist. Let the grace of the Lord God help you translate his holy inspiration into action to alleviate the sufferings of the world’s poor.
make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year A, # 45).
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US