INTROSPECTION NEEDED

 

INTROSPECTION NEEDED

Tenants are business partners of the owner, in today’s parlance. They till the land, take care of the plants, and do the harvesting. In exchange, both owner and tenant share the income at a prearranged prevailing price. Presumably, it is a win-win situation. The owner gets the bigger share of the pie and the tiller-tenant gets what is prescribed by convention or by prevailing standards.

A case of the fairy-tale, live-happily-ever-after ending? Nah! In the Gospel today, the wicked tenants had their own ideas on how to end the affair. In their wicked plans, the ending was meant to be in their favor. They were systematic and ruthless in their ways: they seized the servants, beat one, and stoned another.

But that was just the beginning. The son of the owner bravely took up the slack and tried to continue on with the aborted mission of the first [murdered] servant-emissaries. He paid a hefty price for it. He, too, was murdered, not out of hatred, but out of a wicked desire of the tenants to claim the inheritance. To say that they did not succeed would not be exactly true. They did. And how! “They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.”

There is no denying that in this world, evil seems to triumph. Every three years, despite all our importunings and wishful thinking, the candidates who win the supposedly democratic elections are not exactly like the loyal servants in today’s parable. Money, not love, often wins. Greed, not goodness, trumps all common sense and the search for the common good. The country remains poor because elected “servants” continue to amass wealth and claim for themselves what rightfully belongs to the poor who elected them in the first place.

But let us not be too harsh on other people. It might do us good to look inward rather than outward. They call that introspection. And what do I see? Wickedness knows no bounds and, sadly, even priests and religious like me, could be guilty of even rejecting the cornerstone of moral and personal integrity.

The Lord was rejected by His own people. Do we reject Him, too? Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

---------- REFLECTION QUESTION ----------

In what ways are you like the wicked tenants in the Gospel today?

I am sorry for the many times I have rejected You, O Lord. Amen.
Today, I pray for: _________________________