Sermons

Brothers and sisters, the parable we hear today is not a comfortable one. The owner of the vineyard does not ask for gratitude. He asks for fruit. He sends his servants, and they are beaten. He sends his son, and the son is killed. And then — and this is the part we must sit with — the owner asks: what will he do to those tenants?

We are the tenants. The vineyard is not ours. It was given to us in trust — the Church, the earth, the lives of the poor, the gift of the Gospel itself. And the question the Lord puts to us today is the same question he put to the chief priests: what have we done with what we were given?

I speak to you today not as a judge but as a fellow tenant. I too have been given much. I too will be asked to give an account. The papacy is not a throne. It is a vineyard. And I intend to work in it.