Beginning the Work of Reconciliation and Peace

Dear Friend,

If the stories we hear this week from the prophet Isaiah and from the Gospel of Matthew were news items, they would likely be coming to us with large font headlines: “Chaos in the Vineyard” or “Disorder and Corruption Foretell Rising Wine Prices”! For church folk of a Franciscan bent these same texts might bear an echo of the words Saint Francis heard as he prayed in front of the crucifix at San Damiano Chapel: Go, rebuild my church which you see is falling into ruins! Recovering the vineyard or restoring a church couldn’t be more appropriate for a Sunday which happens to fall on the Feast Day of our patron Saint from Assisi.  

Separated by 700 years, Isaiah and Matthew paint the same picture: God’s work has been thwarted – careful planting has produced bitter grapes, and worse, in Matthew, stewards in violent rebellion have put to death the son of the vineyard owner. Matthew has Jesus himself interpret the parable with words from Psalm 118. Call it a mixed metaphor, yet still it drives home a life-giving paradox: the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done. Did these words run through the mind of Saint Francis as he prayed in the tumble-down chapel? 

Saint Francis’s response to the Word of God shows a bias toward action: he got busy collecting stones for a building project. Later, it was the Word of God that brought him the peace that Saint Paul writes about in the second reading. Let’s take in the encouragement that both saints offer. Is there something we’ve rejected as hopeless or too bitter in our own lives? Let’s begin again the work of reconciliation and peace. God may well be speaking to us in thoroughly unexpected ways.  

 Gratefully,

 Father Dan Lackie ofm, Pastor