HOMILY FOR TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME (A)

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. The setting of today’s Gospel is a vineyard. So too did a vineyard feature last Sunday and it will in next Sunday’s Gospel too. So why did Jesus draw on the symbol of the vineyard so often and what is he teaching us?

First, as we will see from the Gospel next Sunday, the vineyard has an owner and it is not us. God is the owner of the vineyard, meaning that the whole of creation has been entrusted to us a stewards and not as people who have the freedom to do what we like without accountability or consideration for the common good. Nowhere is this responsible stewardship more urgent than in our moral obligation to care for the earth. It is our moral duty and part of our Christian calling. In J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic book and film The Lord of the Rings, it is no coincidence that the Hobbits are depicted as humble and good creatures who live in shires and in harmony with the natural world. In contrast, the evil Sauron and his orks resort to death, destruction, tearing down trees and burning them.

Second, the vineyard is the place where the Lord wants us to be. It is the place of engagement, mission and purpose. From this Sunday’s Gospel, the second brother is applauded because he went into the vineyard despite saying initially that he wouldn’t go. Notice in last Sunday’s Gospel of the workers in the vineyard, the owner of the vineyard kept coming back to the market square to hire people for his vineyard: ‘Why are you standing around idle? You go into my vineyard too!’ This call to enter into the vineyard of the Lord points to the truth that his love for each of us, calls us to go out of ourselves to accomplish some good or mission that he has not entrusted to another. It is a reminder that we matter, that we are needed and that our lives have purpose and meaning.

On Friday night in Paris, Pope Leo gathered with hundreds of thousands of young people in Stade de France. There he spoke directly to their hearts and to their hopes with the same message of hope. He reminded the young people how precious they are in God’s sight and how He has created them for a beautiful life to be lived with a spirit of love and service. He urged them to go out of themselves and out to the poor and broken who are waiting on them. He warned them not to remain in the narrow, stuffy space of isolation and selfishness but to experience the joy of living for someone or something beyond themselves. In Pope Leo’s own words on Friday night:

‘We must reject desires that consume our relationships without giving anything in return or filling us with things that cannot nourish us. Such a lifestyle drives us to have everything, but to become no one; to receive countless “likes” but to remain alone with ourselves’ (Stade de France, 25^th Sep. 2026).

Here is precisely the spirit of mission of Jesus himself. He was sent by the Father on mission into the world to save it. Then when he came, it was not as a high and mighty ruler or powerful king. As St Paul tells us in Second Reading from Philippians, he emptied himself out in service, love and truth. His whole life was a life for others in a love that gave itself away in fidelity to the mission entrusted to him by the Father. For us, this is our calling too. It is not about grasping, taking and building everything around us. It is realising that on the day we were baptised, our lives were claimed by God for a unique mission or calling in life. And every day is a day when we are called and anointed to accept that mission and to enter again the vineyard of the Lord.

This week we enter the month of October which is the month dedicated by the Church to mission. On Thursday this week, we celebrate the Feast of St Therese of Lisieux or the Little Flower who is patron of the missions. Years ago, we associated the missions with priests and religious who were working overseas. For the month of October we prayed for them and helped them financially. Today, the mission fields are right here at home. The time of mission is now, in early 21st century Ireland. No longer is the vineyard of the Lord in a far off country. It is in our home, in the place where we work, in the school we attend and the parish where we live.

In the words of the late Pope Francis, may we be a Church that ‘goes forth as missionary disciples’. May all our parishes be places where people feel welcomed and where their gifts are called forth to serve after the example of Him who ‘did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45).

I conclude with the fitting prayer of Blessed John Henry Newman:

‘God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission - I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  He has not created me for nothing.  I shall do good.  I shall do His work. 

If I am in sickness, may my sickness serve Him; in perplexity, may my perplexity serve Him; if I am in sorrow, may my sorrow serve Him.  He does nothing in vain.  He knows what he is about.  He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me – still, He knows what He is about.  Therefore I will trust Him’.