Rogelio Suarez, LC
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Christ, our King.
Thy Kingdom come!
Preparatory prayer (to put me in the presence of God)
Jesus, thank You for this moment that You allow me to speak from heart to heart. Give me the grace to always act according to your will, loving you with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my strength.
Gospel of the day (to guide your meditation)
From the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark 12, 1-12
At that time Jesus began to speak in parables to the chief priests, the scribes and the elders and said to them, “A man planted a vineyard, surrounded it with a fence, dug a winepress, built a tower for the watchman, rented it to some vinedressers’ and went on a journey abroad. In due time, he sent a servant to the vinedressers to collect his share of the fruit of the vineyard. They seized him, beat him and sent him back with nothing. He sent them another servant, but they beat him and insulted him. He sent them another and they killed him. He sent them many others and they beat or killed them. Now only one remained for him to send, his beloved son, and finally he sent him to them, thinking, ‘My son they will respect. But when they saw him coming, those vinedressers said to themselves, ’This is the heir; let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours.‘ So they seized him, killed him and threw his body out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do then? He will come and destroy those vinedressers and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected is now the cornerstone. This is the work of the Lord's hand; it is a manifest miracle?’ Then the chief priests and the scribes and the elders wanted to seize Jesus, because they realized that he had spoken that parable for them, but they were afraid of the crowd and left Jesus and went away from there.
Word of the Lord
Meditate on what God tells you in the Gospel
The farmers of the Gospel believe that the vineyard is theirs, they think they are the owners, capable of doing with it whatever they want. But they are wrong, the vineyard is God's. He knows what He wants to do with it; what He asks for are the fruits that we have produced in it. Because the vineyard is God's, He asks for its fruits “in due time”. As Christians we are called to take care and sow at all times, so that when the owner of the vineyard asks for the fruits, we can give them to him.
Let us work well in the Lord's vineyard, so that we may bear the fruit that He asks of us. How? By always doing His will. By always being in contact with Him, so that we do not think we are the owners and want to do whatever we want in the vineyard. Normally the owner knows the needs and also knows us well enough to be able to ask what is best for the vineyard and for us.
Let us not be like the tenants of the vineyard, who thought they were the owners and did what they wanted, they coveted what was not theirs. They assumed a possessive attitude and refused to give up what was not theirs.
God does not forget his vineyard, he is always attentive to it, he trusts that the hands that work it will harvest and deliver the fruits in due time.
«In order to make us understand how God the Father responds to the contempt opposed to his love and his covenant proposal, the Gospel passage puts a question in the mouth of the owner of the vineyard: “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? This question underlines that God's disillusionment with the perverse behavior of men is not the last word. This is the great novelty of Christianity: a God who, even when disillusioned by our mistakes and sins, does not lose his word, does not stop and above all does not take revenge! Brothers and sisters, God does not take revenge! God loves, he does not avenge himself, he waits for us to forgive us, to embrace us”.
(Angelus of H.H. Francis, October 8, 2017).
Dialogue with Christ
This is the most important part of your prayer, prepare yourself to talk with much love with the One who loves you.
Purpose
Propose a personal one. The one that involves the most love in response to the Beloved... or, if you believe that this is what God is asking of you, live what is suggested below.
To seek a time to be with Jesus in the Eucharist to remember all his love for me and to ask his forgiveness for the times I have rejected his love and have not worked to cultivate his vineyard.
Farewell
Christ, our King!
Thy Kingdom come!
Most prudent Virgin, Mary, Mother of the Church.
Pray for us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
