29A23.   Isaiah 45:1, 4-6.     Before God created anything, there was absolutely nothing.  What came to be, only came to be, because God created it.  The power that the great Persian emperor Cyrus had was his only because God gave him the means to have access to that power.  In effect, God is saying to Cyrus, “I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me.  It is I who arm you, though you know me not.”

Matthew 22:15-21.  What Jesus had said in the previous Sundays’ gospel enraged the Jewish authorities.  The result was that they plotted to “entrap Jesus in speech” by maliciously putting him in the position of having to respond to a classic dilemma.  If he were to say that one must pay tax to Caesar that would put him in the position of offending the Jewish faith by supporting a pagan authority.  On the other hand, if he were to refuse to pay the tax to Caesar that would put him in violation against the Roman authority and lead to his being arrested and jailed.  Jesus outfoxed the foxes by saying give back to Caesar what was clearly Caesar’s because the coin had Caesar’s image on it but everything else that God has made give back to God.  We too can be more clever than the devil by living our lives in the hands of God who will always protect us from the wiliness of the devil.

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b.   “For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.”  Paul is telling the Thessalonians that coming to live with Jesus as our Savior does not come to us only by the force of intellectual and rational presentation but also by the spiritual power of the Holy Spirit working within us.  It was because of God’s love for them that God chose them by opening up their hearts to Jesus.

29A20.    Isaiah: 1, 4-6.    In Isaiah 10:6 God sends Assyria to punish unfaithful Israel.    Much later in this first reading God also used Cyrus to work his divine Will by moving him to liberate the captive Hebrews.  Cyrus entered Babylon without a fight because, more than likely, he had built up allies within the city who opened the gates to him.  Cyrus seems to have been a master of diplomacy by gaining victories without going to war.  Cyrus may have been looking forward to building a nation friendly to him by releasing the Hebrew captives and helping them financially to rebuild Israel.  God declares his divinity: “I am the Lord, there is no other.”  God declares to Cyrus and to all the world, “It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun, people may know that there is none besides me.”  God is the root source of all that is truly good.  It does not matter that the agent of the good believes in God or not.

Matthew 22:15-21.  The Pharisees hated the Roman occupation of Israel whereas the Herodians embraced and profited from it.  Both hated Jesus because the people went to him and not them.  The old phrase is the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  So they joined forces against Jesus.  They thought they had the perfect trap.  If Jesus chose to pay the taxes, he was the enemy of the Jewish people who hated Roman occupation.  If Jesus chose to refuse to pay taxes to the emperor, he would be executed by the Roman troops. They were sure they had him. His answered stunned them.  “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  In John 19:10a-11, Pilate said to Jesus, “Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you?” Jesus answered, ‘You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above.”  God, the source of all power, empowers us to make choices as he did to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Although empowered by God, he allows us to choose good or evil; despite the fact that the power to make that choice came to us from God.  What belonged to Caesar was a gift to him from God.  In the first reading it was God who empowered Cyrus, though Cyrus had no idea who the God of Israel was.  Let us adore our God and beg him to help us use the resources he has given us to accomplish his Will.

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b.  Paul writes: “For our gospel did not come to you by word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.”  The Holy Spirit gave the Thessalonians strength to accept Jesus and he gave Paul and his helpers the power to preach the good news of Jesus Christ our Savior.  All that is good is gift from God.

29A.   Isaiah 45:1, 4-6.  The Lord makes King Cyrus, his anointed, savior or messiah of the Jewish people who freed them from their captivity and aided in their reestablishment as the Jewish nation.  Cyrus was a non-Jew.  “I called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew me not.”   It is God in his greatness who empowered Cyrus and any others who do truly good things in all of the events of humanity, whether they know God or not.  Our reading quotes God as saying, “I am the Lord, there is other.” It is by the power of God that goodness comes to this earth, though he may choose many instruments or various people to work his Will.

Matthew 22:15-21.  These last three Sundays in the readings from Matthew, Jesus makes it clear to the chief priests and the elders that they will no part in the kingdom of God because they have refused to have Jesus as the anointed, savior or messiah of the Jewish nation.  The Jewish leaders in turn plot to entrap Jesus by luring him into saying something that will put him at odds with either the Jewish people or the Roman authorities.  “Knowing their malice, Jesus said, ‘Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?  Show me the coin that pays the census tax.’ Then they handed him the Roman coin.  He said to them, ‘Whose image is this and whose inscription?’  They replied, ‘Caesar’s.’  At that he said to them, ‘Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  I am always in awe at the ingeniousness of this response.  The glory of God shines through in his answer.  I am sure that they were stunned.  Jesus was not making any attempt to reason with them, since they were beyond any willingness of mind to be reasoned with but was simply fending off their attack.  The truth is that all authority comes from God and God alone.  Jesus says later to Pilate in John 19:11a, “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above.”  As the first reading indicated, Cyrus was anointed king by God’s power and so it was with Caesar and anyone who is ever given authority in this world.  God himself claimed that authority in the first reading by saying, “I am the Lord, there is no other.”

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b. Writing to the church in Thessalonica, Paul gives thanks to God knowing “how you were chosen.  For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.”  The power is the power of the Holy Spirit’s grace conferred on the Thessalonians who with much conviction accept his spiritual life within them.  As God moved King Cyrus and also spoke through Jesus against the errant Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, God now moves the Thessalonians.  “I am the Lord, there is no other.”  Paul calls to mind the Thessalonians’ “work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord.”  These are the three theological virtues, like three pie slices forming a complete circle that is the wholeness of a full Christian life, putting our faith in his love for us gives us the hope for the eternal happiness that helps us to endure through the trials of this world.

28A23.   Isaiah 25:6-10a.  The Hebrew People had been taken away into captivity to Babylonia.  Here Isaiah prophesies that the Lord will deliver his people out of that misery to an earthly paradise that is a sumptuous banquet where all peoples will be united under God and where there will be no sorrow or death.  “Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!”

Matthew 22:1-14.  Jesus again “spoke to the chief priests and elders of the people in” a parable.  They were being likened to guests who refused to attend the royal feast, which was to say that they were rejecting God’s invitation that Jesus was making to them to have a life of living on the good things that God had for them.  Instead they were choosing to live their lives in a way that rejected what God had for them.  The result was to be disastrous for them.  Then everyone else was invited to the feast that they had rejected. Now, instead of just Jews, Gentiles were also invited into heaven.  In the second half of the parable there was a guest who chose to be “without a wedding garment.”  A common understanding of his refusal is that he tried to enter into the feast without taking on the change of mind and heart that would enable him to fully participate in the feast, in other words he was not accepting what was necessary to enter into heaven.

Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20.  Paul says that no matter what his personal circumstances are, feast or famine, he can go on, saying, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”  Paul says to the Philippians that God will do the same for them, since “My God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

28A20.   Isaiah 25:6-10a.   This reading begins and ends with the words “on this mountain,” referring physically to Mount Zion and in Jerusalem (Isaiah 24:23c).   From a spiritual point of view, I understand this phrase to mean that this mountain was the place of soul where God came down to his people and his people lifted themselves or reached up to God.  This section of Isaiah is referred to as the ‘Apocalypse of Isaiah’ to provide a hope or dream of what God would someday do for his people who were still captives living in a foreign land.  “On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death itself.”  I understand Isaiah to mean that God will destroy the worldliness or lack of God-centeredness that leads to so much misery and devastation on this earth that can only end in death.  He would wipe away every tear and especially the reproach or slavery of his people.  Because “the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain,” there will be the kind of rejoicing among all peoples that one experiences at a spectacular, wondrous banquet.  He is the God who spreads the table before us; our cup overflows (Psalm 23).

Matthew 22:1-14.   Again Jesus delivers a parable to the chief priests and the elders.  He is accusing them of being the ones who reject God’s invitation to come to the feast for his son Jesus.  They will be the ones who will be destroyed because they will murder God’s son and their city will be destroyed.  All other peoples would be invited to the heavenly banquet.  The symbolism of the man who attended the wedding feast without a wedding garment is of someone who was not there to embrace the joy of the king but only to partake of the food and drink.  To accept God’s invitation means that we choose to belong to God and to nothing else.  The feast that all were invited to was to have Christ as their life.  Those who do not have Christ as their life will be cast “into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20.  The Church in Philippi offers assistance to Paul.  Paul writes that he is able to do well whether he has little or a lot, as he says, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”  Paul teaches them to do the same, when he says, “My God will supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”   In these three readings we are told to put our faith in our all-provident God who rejoices in being a father who gives his children good things, because he loves us so much.

28A.   Isaiah 25:6-10a.  This is from the section of Isaiah called the Apocalypse of Isaiah, where Isaiah looks to the victory of Yahweh over the forces of evil to which God’s people had succumb, leading to their captivity; and, in turn, for those who remain loyal to the Lord.  The theme of this Sunday’s readings is that God provides for those who choose God.  ‘On this mountain’, probably meaning God’s seat among his people, Jerusalem, Yahweh provides a victorious feast for his people who have stayed with him through their reproach or shame of captivity, to which they have been delivered because of their sin.  In our New Testament world, this food and wine has been seen as a reference to the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  The veil, shroud or pall is the death of sin or rejection of obedience to God that God wipes away or swallows up by his grace, the force of his salvation from our sins.  “Let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!  For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain,” Jerusalem, from which he reaches out to provide salvation to all who accept him as their God and King.

Matthew 22:1-14.  The parable of the invitation to the wedding feast of the king’s son would most readily interpreted as the invitation to heaven; however, I personally prefer to think of it as the invitation to dine each day here on this earth as well as in heaven with the king’s Son, Jesus.  Those who refuse primarily would be the people and leaders of the Chosen people; but secondarily are all those of all times who refused the invitation of the grace of God that leads to the feast.  Rejection of the invitation to enjoy God’s grace leads to the fires of hell.  I interpret the lack of the wedding garment to mean to superficially enter into church life without participating fully in heart and mind.  To feast daily with the Lord is to enjoy his life and person as an essential part of our life and to live in submission of his dominion as king over us.

Philippians 4:12-14.  Paul says he knows “of living in abundance and of being in need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”  God provides through thick and thin if we have him as our life.  Paul thanks the Philippians who help him in his difficulties.  He calls upon the Philippians to depend upon God as he has done. “My God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

Psalm 23.  “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”  “You spread the table before me.”  “My cup overflows.”  The theme of the generosity of the Lord, his endless providence, continues in this psalm.  He makes our life, here and hereafter, an endless feast with the goodness of having him as the foundation of our daily life.  But also he shepherds us.  “He guides me in right paths”  “I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.”  “Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life.”  That does not mean that life is easy and painless but that, through it all, he is with me.  I live daily in his strength.  I am always secure and joyful.

27A23.     Isaiah 5:1-7.   Isaiah paints a verbal allegory of God’s Chosen People who betrayed God’s trust in them by rejecting the wisdom and will of God to put their faith in human ways that were foreign to God.  God abandons his people to the destruction that came to them by their abandonment of the Lord.

Matthew 21:33-43.   Jesus relates a parable “to the chief priests and the elders of the people” that portrayed them as tenants of God’s vineyard who were expected to produce fruit for God.  When God sent his servants, the prophets, to the Hebrew authorities, “one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned.  Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them.”  Here Jesus was speaking of himself that they would kill him.  As in the Isaiah reading, Israel was unfaithful to the Lord.  So Jesus said to the chief priest and elders that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruits,” which is holiness by being faithful to the Lord.  In rejecting God’s will by putting Jesus to death, authority over God’s People no longer belonged to the Jewish authorities but rather to the church that Jesus was establishing through his Apostles and their followers.

Philippians 4:6-9.   “Brothers and sisters: Have no anxiety at all, but in everything,” “make your requests know to God,” so that you live totally dependent upon his presence and life in you.  “Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.”

27A20.   Isaiah 5:1-7.  “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?”  God had done everything to make Judah his holy people but without any good result.  “Then he looked for the crop of grapes, but what it yielded was wild grapes.”  Frustrated with Judah‘s failure to grow to be God’s holy people, God said of Judah, the vineyard of God, “Yes, I will make it a ruin.”  God demands results from his work in gracing us.  If we refused to make use of his graces to grow in holiness, he will abandon us to the results of our sinfulness.

Matthew 21:33-43.   Jesus addresses this parable to the chief priests and elders.   Their ancestors killed the prophets and now their children, the chief priests and the elders, were to kill the son of God so they could take charge of the vineyard, the children of God.  The chief priests and the elders, not realizing at first that the tenants Jesus was referring to were themselves, they responded to Jesus’ question of what the owner should do with the tenants who had done such evil things, saying, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.”  They were predicting what would happen to them who themselves were the wretched tenants.  They would be deposed as the leaders of God’s people.  The vineyard, God’s people, would be given to others who would produce a holy people.   As in the first reading, God demands that the graces he gives us are productive.  Failure to be responsible, that is to respond to God’ graces and produce the results that God wants of us, will lead to a grave punishment.

Philippians 4:6-9.   In the verse before this reading Paul says, “The Lord is near!”  That is to say, be confident. “Have no anxiety at all.”  Make your needs known to God and God will give you what you need.  “Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  In other words, rest in the strength of God.  Be true to God and all he calls you to, as he is true to you. “Then the God of peace will be with you.”  It is only when we do not cooperate with the graces God gives us that the chaos and confusion of this world overwhelm us.

27A.   Isaiah 25:6-10a.  One can only imagine that Isaiah actually sung this to the people.  The vineyard is the people of Jerusalem and Judah.  Yahweh had prepared the people to be a holy people.  As if they were a vineyard, he had given them the Law, the Temple, the prophets; appointed the priests to produce a harvest of holiness.  Instead of growing into a holy people, they were like a yield of wild grapes, a people unfaithful to the Lord.  Rejected by his people, Yahweh made his vineyard into a ruin and allowed first the Assyrians and then Babylonians to trample and destroy the kingdom, first of Israel and then of Judah.  All that was left was bloodshed and the outcry of despair.

Matthew 21:33-43.  Jesus draws upon the images given in Isaiah’s sung parable to pronounce at the beginning of Holy Week a second parable (the first was last week’s gospel) to the chief priests and the elders of the people.  The landowner, again as the image of God, prepared a vineyard, a setting for his people to become a holy people.  However, now Jesus presents the tenants, those in charge of overseeing the care of the vineyard, as the villains.  Yahweh sent his servants, the prophets to obtain to obtain his produce, the holiness, or righteousness of the people but the tenants, the chief priests and the elders, rejected God’s servants, the prophets.  Finally, God sends his Son, Jesus himself, but at the end of Holy Week they kill him hoping to secure for themselves sole possession of God’s people and land, the vineyard.  Jesus says to the chief priests and elders, the tenants of the parable, “Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”  Jesus quotes the Scripture that the builders, once again referring to the chief priests and elders, rejected the cornerstone, Jesus, sent by the Father.  They tried to become the cornerstone themselves; but instead, they lost their position as the builders of God’s kingdom to others.

Philippians 4:6-9.  What is this yield, this produce that the owners look to receive at harvest time that is the holiness or righteousness of his people?  This epistle from Paul is the answer to that question.  People who live totally dependent upon God “have no anxiety at all” because they live in God’s strength and not their own weakness.  Secure in God’s strength there is no reason for worry.  One way or another he will supply for all.  “Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Through prayer, God maintains lines of contact with his faithful.  Prayer is both listening and speaking.  Peaceful discernment of God’s Will is the essential heart of prayer.  What God has to say is infinitely more important than what we have to say.  Two helps that Paul gives us are: whatever is honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious are signs of God’s Will as is, secondly, whatever can be learned from all in life of St. Paul as from the lives of all the saints.  When we live in God’s Will, “Then the God of peace will be with you.”

26A23.     Ezekiel 18:25-28.    When the Lord calls us before his judgment seat, how do we stand in the eyes of the Lord?  We cannot rest on the laurels of the many good deeds we have done but rather what is our moral, spiritual stance at the moment of judgment.  In other words, judgment is not a ledger or balance sheet of additions and subtractions but the person we have become to present to the Lord at the moment of judgement.

Matthew 21:28-32.   The contrast is between an empty ‘yes’ that is without its corresponding action AND a rejecting ‘no’ that is followed by an action that in turn rejects the ‘no’ and does God’s will.  We are saved or lost by the person we really are and the life we actually live and not by what we say or by what we would like to think we are.  The chief priests and elders who knew the will of God but did not obey it did not enter the kingdom of God; the tax collectors and prostitutes did.  The Jewish religious authorities thought of themselves as the epitome of righteousness and of the tax collectors and prostitutes as the scum of society.

Philippians 2:1-11.   “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,” “he emptied himself,” “he humbled himself, becoming obedient  to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Because of this, God greatly exalted him.”  The cross we are called to bear is to give up our will by surrendering ourselves to God’s Will so to bring to fulfillment the image and likeness of God in which we were first created.