From the Deacon’s Desk 10/4/2020

Dear Friends:

Today our Gospel comes from Matthew 21:33-43. It’s another of the more famous Gospels where Matthew uses an agricultural theme to get the point across. The deeper meaning of this parable would be well understood by the Jewish leadership. As I mentioned last week, the confrontational mood between Jesus, the Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes is becoming more evident every day. This story talks about a landowner (God) who sends his servants to collect fruit in his vineyard. The tenants (Jewish Leadership) are not too anxious to give the owner his due! They kill, beat and stone the messengers the landowner sends. The landowner sends more messengers and they do the same to them. Finally he sends his son and they kill him too!

This is exactly what the leaders of the time did to the prophets, other messengers of God, and Jesus himself. They tortured and killed not only God’s messengers, but God’s son too! Jesus became the cornerstone predicted in the Scriptures. The Jewish leadership would not even believe their Scriptures. Selfishness and greed ruled their lives and they missed the message God had been sending them!

God sends us messages and speaks to us often in many ways. We must always be on the lookout for when God might speak to us. It may be in the Scripture, at Mass or maybe a greeting card we receive. It may also be a sitcom or a cop show. We just never know how he will get his message to us.

Let us all pay attention and listen to when God might be speaking to us. We don’t want to miss even one iota of the wisdom and the message he has for us.

Peace and All Good!

Deacon Jim

 

Please continue to pray for relief from this virus. Although things are looking better we must not relinquish our prayers for the Lord to bring this scourge to and end! Never stop praying for the things we need, and we do need an end to this!