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.

26A20.    Ezekiel 18:25-28.  God is the only source of life; everything or everyone else apart from God can only produce death.  Iniquity or sin is a rejection of God as our source of life.  The fruit of sin is death that has no redemption.  What counts at the time of judgment is where our life is at the time of judgment.  If God finds us on the right road of the straight and narrow at the time of judgment, we are on our way to heaven.  On the other hand, all the past good we have done will not cancel out the present state of sin we are in.

Matthew 21:28-32.   Ezekiel’s reading parallels today’s parable.  Yesterday’s sin is wiped away by today’s change of heart.  However, today’s sin is not wiped away by yesterday’s goodness.  The ‘yes’ that the chief priests and elders said to God yesterday does not gain for them forgiveness for today’s rejection of Jesus.  On the other hand, the tax collectors and prostitutes who were sinners yesterday but today accept and follow Jesus are on their way to heaven.  The old saying is that we are sinners on our way to becoming saints; not saints, on our way to becoming sinners.  We can never become complacent on our way to heaven.  This world, the devil and some of our own natural tendencies can easily put us back on the wrong road.

Philippians 2:1-11.  “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory.”  Jesus said in Luke 9:23-24: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”  Original sin, imbedded in human nature, calls us to grab everything for ourselves before others get it. That is life lived on the basis of the survival instinct, where all our lives are all about oneself and those one considers part of oneself.   Jesus demands that we live in him and he lives in us (John 14:4) or that we lose our grip on own lives so that we can live in his life-giving strength and will.  Paul says that Jesus emptied himself of living only in a divine state in heaven but humbled himself by taking on human nature.  His infinite love for us led him to become human so that he could sacrifice himself for the sake of our redemption.  “Because of this, God greatly exalted him” so that we may all declare that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  If God is everything for us, then we will have everything that is good and have it forever.

26A.   Ezekiel 18:25-28.   This selection of Ezekiel sets the stage for this week’s lesson.  There is a group that thinks they know better than God.  Adapting a line from a famous musical, “Why can’t God think like we do?”  Adding just another line, “We’ve got it right.  Why can’t God think like we do?”  It is so easy to take the position of God and allocate it to oneself, which is to say, “What I think is right and virtuous and not what God thinks,” or another way to say the same thing, “I replace God; instead of God over me, it is I over me.  I am quite capable of running my own life without God.”

Matthew 21:28-32.  That is exactly what the chief priests and elders of the people thought.  The second son took on the veneer of holiness and piety but within himself thought he knew better than the father; and so, he ignore what the father wanted and did whatever he wanted to do.  The first son had a mind of his own, had no desire to put up a front of pleasing the father, spoke his own mind and did as he himself pleased.  Realizing the error of his ways, the first changed his mind and, in fact, obeyed his father.  Jesus likens the second son to the chief priests and the elders of the people; and the tax collectors and the prostitutes, to the first.  Jesus points out that John the Baptist got them to do the right thing but the chief priests and the elders of the people refused to follow the way of John’s righteousness.

Philippians 2:1-11.    Paul calls on us to, “Have the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus,” i.e., as he emptied himself, humbled himself so should we.  Jesus was so submissive to the Father’s will that became “obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.”  He, unlike us, was equal to the Father but “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.”  He let go of what was his right to hold on to and “taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,” since he was truly human yet still divine so to accomplish the redemption of humanity.

“Complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing.  Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory.”  The chief priests and elders of the people were so full of themselves that they rejected the way of righteousness of both John and Jesus.  That same selfishness is what divides the Church community.  That attitude that I know better than God, than the Church authority divides the Church, creates divisions and an atmosphere which does not speak love of one another.

The last verse of Sunday’s psalm (Ps 25:8-9) says, “Good and upright is the Lord; thus he shows sinners the way.  He guides the humble to justice, and teaches the humble his way.”  He is “the way, the truth and the life.”  In Matthew 11:29-30, Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.” Resting in the Lord’s humility and obedience, leads us to be a humble and obedient people likewise.  “Let every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

25A23.    Isaiah 55:6-9.   “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near.”  Lost in our humanness, some may think that God does not seem to show up anywhere in one’s life. They think that perhaps God is lost in some other world.   God is not lost, we are.  God can be found; he has always been right here.  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”  But the Spirit has been given to us to make God’s ways our ways by making room for God to be the very center of our lives, around whom and in whom our lives are lived.

Mathew 20:1-16a.  In this parable the landowner, who I believe is to be identified as Jesus speaking of himself, is saying that he will give heavenly goods not only to those who inherited them by birth, the Jews, but also to others who now receive heavenly goods by only recently putting their faith in Christ.  “What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?” “Are you envious because I am generous?  Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”  We receive God’s heavenly gifts here on earth by living a life of faith in him and thus becoming first.

Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a.  Paul is saying that his life is all about Christ who is his life.  Everything Paul does, thinks or says reflects the Christ who is the one who is what Paul’s life is all about.  For Paul going up to heaven to have a complete and total union with Jesus would be great but there is still so much more to be done here on earth to accomplish the work that Jesus has for him to do for the benefit of the people to whom Jesus has sent Paul.  Paul is wonderful example for us to live our lives in the Lord.