Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

"What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?" - Isaiah 5:4

Four weeks in the vineyard start today. From now until All Saints the Church asks one question: what fruit is your life bearing? Before it asks that, the owner of the vineyard asks another. What more was there to do?

Isaiah lists what he did. He spaded the hillside, cleared it of stones, planted the choicest vines, built a watchtower, and hewed out a wine press. He did all of it first. Only then did he look for grapes. Jesus tells the same story. The landowner plants, fences, digs the press, builds the tower, and leases the vineyard to tenants. The tenants receive a finished vineyard and are asked for a share of the harvest.

A steward remembers whose vineyard he is tending.

The tenants forgot. They beat the servants who came for the produce, and then they killed the son, because they had begun to treat what was leased to them as their own. The parable is aimed at the leaders of Israel. It also fits any man who has been given a vineyard: a family, a business, a parish. The temptation is to keep the harvest.

Before I ask what I have produced, I have to count what was planted. I did not plant my own faith. I received it through a very faith-filled Catholic mom who was always nurturing the faith in us. My dad was not yet Catholic at the time. He was a devout Christian, and he instilled the practice of the faith and a love for Scripture. It was in the ground before I could have cleared a single stone.

The examen begins there, with what was done for you, and then asks what you have done with it. Paul's second reading starts the same way. Make your requests known to God, he says, with thanksgiving. Thanksgiving comes first. The gift comes first, and the fruit follows.

This week you will name three gifts you did not earn, and ask for light on one part of your spiritual life. Begin tonight, brother. Keep last week's card, the three places you have seen God act, and take a second index card for the gifts. Write the first gift: the person who planted the faith in you, by name, and one sentence about what they did. Then thank that person out loud, whether they are living or dead.

Lord of the vineyard, you did everything before you asked me for anything. Let me count what you planted before I count what I have grown. Amen.