We are Tenants, not Owners:
The Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time 2026
October 4, 2026
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Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43
I was speaking to a friend after Mass last week and he said that he found all of these parable stories quite boring. Previously, I said to a Jesuit in my community that I found all these parables so energizing because it challenges all the presumptions that we hold. It has the potential to rock our spiritual world. We cannot read this as an historical account. This Gospel passage seems particularly fragile because it asks what we are doing today. It asks the question: Does our tenancy in the vineyard produce fruit because it belongs it to the one who produces much fruit?
A typical Catholic reading of this passage may produce this response: The kingdom has been taken away from the Jews and it now belongs to the Catholics. Sometimes Catholics act with exceptionalism and presumption. We see that passage as an historical fact that Jews did not recognize Jesus, but Gentiles did, and so we are the owners. We see it as an allegory of the trial and Crucifixion because they did not recognize Jesus, the owner’s son, who was put to death. We rest in the assurance that we have got it right. We think we have acted responsibly and have to do nothing more. Uh oh!
We have to read this in the present as if it is unfolding before us today. We first have to realize that we are tenants – not the owners. The vineyard, the faith, the kingdom, does not belong to us. We are stewards of something that belongs to God, who will give it to whomever does the work of God. We think we do the work of God, and no one else does it as fully. The problem in the story is about the refusal to recognize God, the one to whom the vineyard belongs. Jesus is confronting religious leaders who have been entrusted with God’s people but failed to recognize what responsibility means. They have confused being entrusted with the kingdom to owning it.
The warning about responsibility has consequences: The kingdom will be taken away from you and it will be given to others who will produce its fruit. The kingdom is not a reward for those who have accumulated the greatest religious credentials or have the long-lasting, enduring structure, like the Papacy. Religious privilege does not earn God’s favor. None of the Christian churches can say, “We have always been God’s people, therefore, the kingdom belongs to us.” The question is: are we producing the fruit of the kingdom? It requires our constant conversion and discernment. If not, it can be given to “new tenants” who respond differently to God’s invitation. It is not about superior moral achievement. It is about God bringing forth something new with those who accept responsibility for the kingdom.
What kind of tenants are we? What are we doing with it? Are we cultivating it for others and using it for God’s intended purposes? Are people experiencing mercy through us? Are people that we might have once considered sinners find welcome in our hearts? Or do they experience our wrathful judgment? Do we allow the wounded to find healing? Or the excluded finding a place with us? Are we certain that we are listening to God? Are we so convinced of our rightness and righteousness, are we so certain, that we stop listening to the owner?
The vineyard does not belong to us. We need to be responsible stewards. We have to be very careful. When we who are entrusted with God’s work use that trust for ourselves rather than for God’s purposes, God has no hesitation to entrust the work to others who will bear its fruit. This is a serious responsibility.
Scripture for Daily Mass
Monday: (Galatians 1) I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the Gospel of Christ.
Tuesday: (Galatians 1) You heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it, and progressed in Judaism
beyond many of my contemporaries among my race, since I was even more a zealot for my ancestral traditions.
Wednesday: (Galatians 2) After fourteen years I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. I went up in accord with a revelation, and I presented to them the Gospel that I preach to the Gentiles–but privately to those of repute–so that I might not be running, or have run, in vain.
Thursday (Galatians 3) O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? I want to learn only this from you: did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard?
Friday (Galatians 3) Realize that it is those who have faith who are children of Abraham.
Scripture, which saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, foretold the good news to Abraham, saying, Through you shall all the nations be blessed.
Saturday (Galatians 3) Scripture confined all things under the power of sin, that through faith in Jesus Christ the promise might be given to those who believe. Before faith came, we were held in custody under law, confined for the faith that was to be revealed.
Gospel:
Monday: (Luke 10) There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said,
“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind,
Tuesday: (Luke 10) Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Wednesday (Luke 11) Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."
Thursday (Luke 11) “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him.’
Friday (Luke 11) When Jesus had driven out a demon, some of the crowd said: “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.” Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven.
Saturday (Luke 11) While Jesus was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.”
Saints of the Week
October 4: Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) was from the wealthy Bernardone family who sold silk cloths. After serving as soldier as a prisoner of war, Francis chose to serve God and the poor. He felt called to repair God's house, which he thought was a church. His father was angry that he used family money so he disinherited him. He began to preach repentance and recruited others to his way of life. His order is known for poverty, simplicity, humble service, and delighting in creation.
October 6: Bruno, priest (1030-1101), became a professor at Rheims and diocesan chancellor. He gave up his riches and began to live as a hermit with six other men. They had disdain for the rampant clerical corruption. The bishop of Grenoble gave them land in the Chartreuse mountains and they began the first Carthusian monastery. After serving in Rome for a few years, Bruno was given permission to found a second monastery in Calabria.
October 7: Our Lady of the Rosary recalls the events in 1571 of the Christian naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto near Corinth. Victory was credited to Mary as confraternities prayed the rosary for her intercession.
October 9: Denis, bishop and martyr, and companion martyrs (d. 258), was the first bishop of Paris. He died during the Decian persecutions by beheading at Montmarte, the highest hill in the city. Lore has it that he picked up his head after the beheading and walked six miles while giving a sermon. Denis was sent to Paris to bring Christianity and was thereby called, “The apostle to the Gauls.”
October 9: John Leonardi (1542-1609), was a pharmacist’s assistant before studying for the priesthood. He became interested in the reforms of the Council of Trent and gathered laymen around him to work in prisons and hospitals. He contracted the plague while ministering to those who were sick. He founded the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God to care for the sick.
This Week in Jesuit History
- October 4, 1820. In Rome, great troubles arose before and during the Twentieth General Congregation, caused by Fr. Petrucci's intrigues. He sought to wreck the Society and was deposed from his office as Vicar General, though supported by Cardinal della Genga (afterwards Leo XII).
- October 5, 1981. In a letter to Father General Arrupe, Pope John Paul II appointed Paolo Dezza as his personal delegate to govern the Society of Jesus, with Fr. Pittau as coadjutor.
- October 6, 1773. In London, Dr James Talbot, the Vicar Apostolic, promulgated the Brief of Suppression and sent copies to Maryland and Pennsylvania.
- October 7, 1819. The death of Charles Emmanuel IV. He had been King of Sardinia and Piedmont. He abdicated in 1802 and entered the Jesuits as a brother in 1815. He is buried in San Andrea Quirinale in Rome.
- October 8, 1871. The Great Chicago Fire. Most of the city was destroyed, but it missed Holy Family, the Jesuit parish, as the fire turned north thanks to the prayers of Fr. Arnold Damen. The fire lasted three days; 250 were killed.
- October 9, 1627. Jansenius left Louvain for Salamanca to foment antipathy against the Jesuits and thus prevent Philip IV from giving the Society a large college in Madrid. The theological faculty at Salamanca were hostile to the Society.
- October 10, 1806: The first novitiate of the Maryland Mission opened as ten novices began their Long Retreat under the direction of Fr. Francis Neale (himself a novice who had entered the Jesuits that day.)
