MINE! MINE!
27th Sunday in Ordinary
Time
First reading (Isaiah 5:1-7)
Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 80:9,
12-16, 19-20)
Second reading (Philippians 4:6-9)
Gospel (Matthew 21:33-43)
Faith, time,
love, education, family, friends, praises, talents and the list goes on. These
are things we possess that we should hold dear and consider important, most
especially because they are given to us by God as gifts. But there are times
when we hold on to them too much, that instead of considering them important,
what becomes important for us is ourselves. We hold on to them and say,
"Mine! Mine!"
Our gospel
reading (according to St. Matthew) for this Sunday has taught me just that: the
danger of holding onto things and giving in to our selfishness. Jesus gives his
disciples a parable on the selfish tenants. A landowner prepares his land and
leases it to tenants until harvest time. The tenants however wanted to take the
land for themselves. Everytime the landowner sends servants to obtain the
harvest, the tenants beat stone and kill these servants. Even the landowner's
son whom he sent was killed by the tenants.
The
tenants, who were given a land to take care of, held onto the land so much that
their hearts screamed to the servants and the landowner's son,
"Mine!" There are times when we would go so far as to take all the
credit for the good we are able to do and the success we receive, convincing ourselves
that we deserve them because we worked so hard. We attribute all our goodness
to ourselves. In the long run, we end up conceited and arrogant.
The Lord
calls us to two things: humility and responsibility. In our second reading (from
the letter of St. Paul to the Philippians), St. Paul encourages his brothers
and sisters to make their requests known to God. If this is done, the peace of
God will be in their hearts and will guard them from selfish impulses. Asking
for something takes humility, realizing that we need help and on our own we can
never do enough. When we find humility in souls, we will discover peace in our
hearts –peace from the disturbances of our selfish cravings that can never be
satisfied.
The second
call of the Lord for us is responsibility. Being humble doesn’t simply mean
acknowledging that we are helpless. Humility requires us to accept that we
cannot accomplish everything on our own, that we need help, the help of God
first and foremost. Thus, in knowing that we cannot accomplish everything on
our own, we should see that there are things we can accomplish, not everything
but some things. In our first reading (from the book of the prophet Isaiah),
God entrusted Israel with seeds of faith, but Israel, instead of bearing good
grapes, bore wild grapes. Let us heed this call of God in this story –we are
each given responsibilities in the gifts given to us by God: faith, time, love,
education, family, friends, praises, talents and the list goes on. What have we
done so far in caring for these gifts? Have we taken responsibility for them or
have we taken them for our own and did with them as we pleased?
The readings
for this Sunday remind us to wake up from this selfish slumber to the reality
that it is God who gives us the things we need to succeed. And that the fruits
that come from these are rightfully His, not ours. All credit belongs to Him. In
order to realize this, we need to grow in humility. Then, coupled with
humility, we must take responsibility for the gifts God shares with us. In
doing so, we might rid our hearts of the cry “Mine! Mine!” and instead hear God
whisper to us, “Mine!” because He is proud that we are His.
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