Lessons About the Lord’s Kingdom, 20th Wednesday (I), August 23, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of St. Birgit Vikingsborg Retreat House, Darien, CT
Retreat Day for the Teachers and Staff of Regina Pacis Academy
Wednesday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Rose of Lima
August 23, 2023
Judges 9:6-15, Ps 21, Mt 20:1-16

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today during this Day of Recollection in preparation for the upcoming school year, we enter more deeply into the school of the Master, who today teaches us a couple of important lessons about his kingdom.
• The first is that we need to desire him to rule. In the first reading from the Book of Judges, we see how when we don’t want the Lord to rule over us, we will be vulnerable to being ruled by rogues and basically even by the devil in disguise. Throughout the desert, God was teaching the Israelites to obey him and let him lead them, but they often resisted, longing to return to Egypt in slavery under Pharaoh rather than trust in the Lord. After they crossed into the Promised Land, they often totally forgot the Lord or rebelled against him. The Lord routinely raised up judges to deliver them, to show them how to obey him anew, to call them to conversion, but as soon as the judges died they rebelled again. After Gideon (as we would have seen yesterday if we didn’t celebrate the Coronation) defeated 135,000 Midianites with 300 soldiers, they asked him to rule over them, but he reminded them that they already had a ruler, God himself. But as soon as he died, his son by a concubine, Abimelech, desirous of being king and knowing that the people wanted someone to rule over them, decided to seize the opportunity and kill all seventy of his half-brothers and assume the throne. He killed 69, with only his youngest half-brother Jotham escaping. And the carnage was just beginning. Later he would burn down the tower with various elders meeting in it, wiping them out in the process. Those who want to rule like a god rather than a servant of God often cannot tolerate any other sources of authority, which is what we’ve seen with tyrants across the centuries and how they’ve persecuted the Church, religious believers in general and all those who follow a conscience rather than their whims. But the people basically accepted Abimelech’s homicidal rule. Eventually Jothan, his half-brother, would come out from hiding, go to the top of Mount Gerizim, and give the parable we hear in today’s first reading. The trees wanted a ruler, but the olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine refused, and so they got the buckthorn, representing Abimelech, who replied, “‘If you wish to anoint me king over you in good faith, come and take refuge in my shadow. Otherwise, let fire come from the buckthorn and devour the cedars of Lebanon.’” It was his shadow, not God’s, and anyone not beholden to him was fit to be burned down and devoured. The same history would take place later with the Jews in the desire for a king. They wanted to be like the other nations rather than singularly the Lord’s special people. Eventually they got Saul who himself would become a paranoid megalomaniac. They were susceptible to getting the leaders they deserved precisely because they were intent not to have the Lord rule them. They wanted to decide. There are still many lessons for us about our own political leaders, especially today when a presidential debate will take place, and what we get when we begin to think not about how individuals can help create the context for everyone to follow God’s lead, but rather about how to take the place of God.
• The second lesson about the kingdom is given in the Gospel. When we decide to live by God’s ways, then our ambitions change. We want to work for the kingdom and the king whose ways are not our ways. The first point Jesus makes in his Gospel parable is that to enter into the Kingdom of God, we need to work. God calls workers into his vineyard, laborers, those who can help him urgently take in his harvest. He himself goes out several times in the day and calls people to come to exert themselves. Notice that he doesn’t give things out of charity to the people sitting idle in the marketplace. He gives them something to do. Insofar as this parable is about the harvest of men and women, we can say that to enter the kingdom, we must respond to the Harvest Master’s calling and work as laborers in his fields. We must engage in the apostolate, seek to make disciples, strenuously labor for God’s harvest. The gift of the kingdom, in this world and forever, while a grace, isn’t a handout. God wants us to work for him and with him in his fields. Do we want a Lord with these principles to rule over us? The second point Jesus makes in this second lesson is about God’s generosity. In the Parable he gives everyone the same payment. Those who went to work first thing in the day complain out of envy, thinking that they should have gotten more than the ones who worked only an hour. We can understand their point. As the owner says in the Parable, however, he had given them what he had promised — and it’s his prerogative to be extra generous to others. We know that this Parable points to the path of salvation and that Dismas on Jesus’ right on Calvary, as well as the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, and 11 of the 12 apostles, will receive the same full life’s wage for their work in the vineyard, however disparate. Do we want a Lord who rules over us like this, who rewards the spiritual johnny-come-latelies just like he rewards us? If we resent that generosity, it’s likely because we resent God’s ruling over us and are only working in his vineyard, are only faithful, because we feel we have to, in hope of a future eternal payment, rather than because we realize living by the Gospel is itself a great blessing.
• Today the Church celebrates someone who wanted the Lord to rule over her, who wanted his kingdom to come, who labored to build up that kingdom, and who has received a full life’s wage. St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617) was born in Lima, Peru, and from a young age desired to dedicate herself totally to the Lord and his kingdom. In imitation of St. Catherine of Siena, she lives as a young girl an ascetical life, fasting three times a week and performing various penances, like limiting her sleep. Because she was very beautiful and too many then as now have a cult of physical beauty, and her parents try to plan her future based on those who were drawn to her by their eyes, she cut off her hair and rubbed pepper in her face lest others look to her instead of the Lord. She received Jesus in the Holy Eucharist every day and spent many hours of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. She desired to become a Dominican nun, but her parents objected, so she became a Dominican tertiary and took a vow of virginity, and lived with them in a room in her family home. She dedicated herself to caring for the sick and hungry around Lima, selling her fine needlework as well as flowers from her garden, to care for her family and for them. She died at 31 and became the first saint of the Americas, canonized in 1671. Her whole life was a desire to serve the Lord and to work for his kingdom in her prayer, from early in the morning to late at night, knowing that the Lord himself, in the Eucharist, was her superabundant daily wage.
• St. Rose got the strength to labor in the vineyard precisely through the Eucharist. She could do all things in Him who strengthened her. Today we join her in telling the Lord that we want him to rule over his, we want his kingdom to come, we want his will to be done, and we rededicate ourselves to this call on this retreat as we prepare to go out into his fields this school year with sleeves rolled up seeking to form boys and girls as laborers and bring them in the fields so that with us they may receive a full life’s wage and come to experience the joy of the first and all subsequent saints of the Americas and more.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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