For this week’s homily, please watch the video below.

In today’s gospel, the owner of the vineyard is a mysterious figure. The workers he hires for his harvest can’t figure him out. They can’t figure out the way he pays his workers, they can’t figure out his generosity. He’s a mystery to them.

Of course the owner of the vineyard in today’s parable is God, and we’re the workers who labor in this world for whatever years that God calls us. God is a also a mystery to us.  Isaiah says that in our 1st reading:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.

This is a good parable for reflecting on a big question we face today: how is God related to our world today. It’s an unstable world today isn’t it? The times are so unsure. We’re looking at a multiple of wars that don’t seem to end,  political problems that only increase, climate change. Some smart people even speak of Doomsday in the light of developments in AI. They say everything, even ourselves, are coming to an end..

For some, God has nothing to do with all of this. God doesn’t exist, some say. Others say if God does exist he doesn’t have anything to do with this world. Jesus Christ? He’s irrelevant —-  someone from the past. 

Even with faith, these are scary times. What can our parable tell us? 

For one thing, the owner of the vineyard has the last word. He owns the vineyard.  God is the creator of all things. Creation is his vineyard; he called it into being.

Where do we come from and what’s our role?  We’re workers in God’s vineyard.“We are his creatures. He made us. We belong to him.” We were called for a time to live and labor in God’s creation. God is our Lord. 

Our world is described in the parable as  a vineyard. It’s not meant to be a place of wars or strife. Certainly it’s not meant to be destroyed. It meant to be a place of harvest. The parable suggests that every generation of human beings is called to work for that harvest. Each generation and each one of us individually has something to do to make this world fruitful. 

We are meant also to work together in this world. We are not individual fortune seekers grabbing all we can get for ourselves. 

This month of September up to the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4th, our church and other churches celebrate the Season of Creation, a time to recall what this parable teaches. Our world is a precious gift of God and we should care for it. 

Don’t leave Jesus Christ out in the Season of Creation,  for he reminds us of God’s plan for our world. He is not just Jesus of Nazareth, from in a little corner of the Middle East long ago, rejected by his own people and put to death.  He is not just a teacher who tells us how to get along with one other.

Jesus is “the image of the invisible God…in him were created all things in heaven and on earth.” “He holds all things together” , for 4.5 billion years and beyond. He is the Cosmic Christ, who brings peace through the blood of his cross. He lives and reigns with Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  

Our celebration of Mass reminds of his place in creation. As we bring bread, wine and water to the altar we bring fruits of the harvest to the Lord of the harvest, who blesses them and gives them back to us for the work we have to do.God is present in these gifts. God is present in our world, leading it to harvest time.

“In him we live and move and have our being.”

 “Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the Body, the Church.He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the Blood of his cross through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.”  (Colossians 1, 15-20)