Especially, it seems, during the season of Lent, our readings have common themes. In both first reading and Gospel today, we stories of rejection. In the first reading Joseph’s brothers rejected him and plotted to kill him. In the Gospel, in the parable of the wicked tenants tells of the tenant farmers who reject , seize and kill, not only the vineyard owners servants but also his son.
Jesus offers this parable to the chief priests and elders who are treating him like the son of the vineyard owner. The Lord too will be seized and killed by those who reject him.
The tale of rejection goes back to the beginning when Adam and Eve rejected God’s command, thereby rejecting His plan for them and for mankind. By rejecting God they forfeited paradise. So too, the Lord explains that for those who reject Him, “the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
Those who reject God are ultimately fruitless; whatever they hope to build drawing upon their own plans instead of Gods, will ultimately crumble and fall.
Personal Sin, for which we do penance during the Lenten season, always involves a rejection of God’s truth and God’s plan, a rejection of his prophets, a rejection of His Son. Sin pretends that our time, our talents, our treasures belong to us, to dispose of following the whims of our egos. Sometimes the teachings of the Church are found difficult—they infringe on our sinful habits and attachments—and so they are rejected. At yet, they are difficult so often because we have hardened our hearts against them and have failed to trust God as we should.
Thanks be to God for sending His missionaries and messengers and His Son into our lives in order to free us from pretend lifestyles. For the Gospel helps us to remember that I am not the vineyard owner, merely a tenant; and God has sent his Son, to free us from our sins.
In the Lenten Call to repentance we acknowledge those times that we have rejected what God wants for us. The more serious we are about our Lenten penances the more we will come to hate sin and the rejection of God. For our Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are meant to till the hardened soil of our hearts; to wake us up out of our tendency to reject God’s truth, and to help us obtain a life free of envy, impatience, jealousy, violence, arrogance, self-centeredness—for a life of authentic service of the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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That the season of Lent may bring the most hardened hearts to repentance and bring to all people purification of sin and selfishness.
For those preparing for baptism and the Easter sacraments, that they may continue to conform themselves to Christ through fervent prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
That Our Lady and St. Joseph may protect Holy Father Pope Francis in his apostolic visit to the war-torn country of Iraq, and that the Gospel may be accepted and cherished there and in every land.
That we may generously respond to all those in need: the sick, the suffering, the homeless, the imprisoned, and victims of violence. For the protection of the unborn and a respect for the dignity of every human life.
For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.
Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy. Through Christ our Lord.
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