All of us are tenants entrusted by God with vineyards. Our homes, our workplaces, our classrooms, our convents, our seminaries are our vineyards.

Sometimes, we find these vineyards not yielding so many fruits like they used to. We get caught in the humdrum of things, we become slaves to the structure and routine, and the passion and ardency we used to have are now languishing. The good news is, God does not lose hope in us.

In the Gospel, the owner first sends a few servants to obtain the produce but are killed by the tenants. Again, he sends a few more servants who suffer the same fate… until the owner sends his son, thinking, “They will respect my son” (v 37).

Sometimes our past unfaithfulness, sins, or refusal to God’s invitation to grow can swallow us up and send us into the pit of defeat, but God does not lose hope in us. He is rooting for us, helpings us out of the darkness we have led ourselves into. May we also never lose hope on ourselves the way God never loses trust and confidence in us.

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. But the tenants seized the servants and 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, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?”

They answered him, “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.”

Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes? 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.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew that he was speaking about them. And although they were attempting to arrest him, they feared the crowds, for they regarded him as a prophet.