13th Sunday After Pentecost

Matthew 21:33-42

On Friday of this past week we celebrated the great feast of the Dormition of the most holy Mother of God. This feast marks the final great feast day of the Church Calendar year. The new year begins in September and it is quite fitting that the Church calendar is bookended by two feasts in honor of the Mother of God: the Dormition completes the year, and the Nativity of the Mother of God is the first great feast celebrated in the new year.

It is perhaps obvious why we would mark the beginning and end of the year with commemorations to the Mother of God – she is such an integral part of the saving work of her Son and our Lord Jesus Christ. It was through her acceptance and participation that Christ took on human flesh, and through her intercessions that we turn to her as our heavenly mother and mediatress before God, she is ‘more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare, more glorious than the Seraphim’.

But I would like to focus today on some particular aspects and virtues of the Mother of God that we would do well to reflect upon and to emulate to the best of our ability. To highlight her virtues, let’s first turn to the scene placed before us in today’s Gospel reading.

In today’s reading we heard the parable of the owner of a vineyard. The owner has equipped this vineyard with all that is necessary to produce fruit and to protect its healthy production. He rents out the vineyard to some cultivators to whom he entrusts its care and stewardship. Again and again he sends messengers to collect the rent and over and over again these messengers are ignored, ridiculed, even stoned and beaten. Finally, he sends his own son – expecting that they will respect him. Seeing the son of the owner, the wicked cultivators conspire to kill him in order to receive his inheritance.

The initial interpretation of this parable is obvious… Jesus is speaking directly and referring to the nation of Israel – that vineyard of the Lord which had been so well equipped by the promises and laws of God with all that is necessary to bring forth spiritual fruit. The many messengers sent to the vineyard are none other than the prophets of the Old Testament – the long succession of holy men and women who called the nation of Israel back to repentance and the ways of God and who were again and again ignored, rejected, despised, and killed. And the son is, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ – the Son of God Who was sent to the vineyard to speak directly, to show by living example, and to intercede for the people of God. This parable was spoken by Jesus on Tuesday of Holy Week just before His crucifixion. It was designed to awaken the Pharisees, the scribes and the priests to the terrible sins they had committed in the past against the prophets and the great sin they were about to commit against God’s own Son. It is a powerful parable and a clear forewarning of what was to come.

Contrast this stubbornness, self-centeredness, and greed with the reaction of the Mother of God to her annunciation that she was to give birth to the promised Messiah. She does not rebel in selfish gain, instead she humbly accepts the words of the angel and replies: ‘Behold the handmaiden of the Lord! Let it be to me according to thy word.’

This is an astonishing response! The Mother of God, throughout her life, shows us the way of humility and trust in the goodness of God.

The last words recorded in the Gospels of the blessed Theotokos come to us from the description of the events at the marriage feast in Cana in Galilee. When there was no more wine at the feast the Most Pure Virgin approached her Son and told him that they had no more wine. Our Lord replied, ‘O woman, of what concern is this to you and to me?’ But the Virgin Mary had complete trust in her Son and God and spoke these final words to the disciples and to us: ‘Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.’

What a legacy of wisdom she bestows upon us with these words: ‘Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.’

The life of the Mother of God is one of humble acceptance and trust, of a heart pierced with the sword of co-suffering love, and – as we see in the icons of the feast of the Dormition – of the ascension to true purity of heart and childlike innocence, as Christ takes the soul of the Holy Virgin Mother into His arms. This scene in the icon of the Dormition is so full of tenderness and hope. She who held Christ as an infant in her arms, now is held by her Son and God as an ‘infant soul’, pure and innocent and ready for the Kingdom of Heaven.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ… let us reflect today and at all times upon the contrast of the ambition and greed of the vineyard workers and of the humility and submission of the Most Pure Mother of God. Those wicked workers of the vineyard did not receive the inheritance they sought to take by their own means. Their selfish greed led them to their doom. While a young virgin, pure of heart and expressing perfect trust in God, received not only the inheritance of the Kingdom, but is honored above all others and stands beside her Son and our God as an intercessor and Mother for the whole human race.

That path of the Holy Virgin… is echoed for us in today’s Epistle reading wherein the Apostle Paul states:‘Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. Let all that you do be done with love.’

This is the path of Christianity, this is the path toward holiness and the Kingdom of Heaven, which breaks through even in this mortal life and gives the Grace of God’s love which illumines everything!