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Today’s vineyard parable highlights the rejection the servants of God will inevitably suffer when they try to gather in the harvest of grapes in the Lord’s vineyard.  

With God’s help, there is always hope, even for the seemingly hopeless! The readings today urge us to keep our hope alive, and to place our hope in the power of Christ to transform us, to make all things new, to change our ways, our attitudes, our strategies, our predicaments.

There are some situations in life in which you want to scream: “it’s not fair!” Maybe Jesus is trying to tell us that the kingdom of heaven does not operate on the merit system. My friends, God is not fair by human standards… but God is exceedingly generous. So, let's simply rejoice in God’s generosity!

The simple moral of this story is that if we want the Lord to forgive our sins and shortcomings, we must follow suit and extend that forgiveness to others. 

Resolving conflicts in a genuine Christian manner is very hard to do… but it is our call, our duty, our responsibility, because we Christians love our neighbor as ourselves.  

The readings today offer us a spiritual crosswalk. Jesus teaches us that in order to be his disciples, we must lose our lives in sacrificial love, take up our cross, and follow him.

Keys are a powerful symbol of authority and responsibility.  The readings for today are all about the Lord bestowing a ring of keys on those he has chosen to lead his beloved People.  My friends, in a sense we are all given a set of keys at our baptism.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” The wisdom behind this saying applies to many facets of life, including our prayer and spiritual life.

My friends, where can we find God every day? Surely in the beauty and leisure of a summer day, in the selfless love of a fellow Christian. But God can also be found in less obvious places, whispering his kindness and mercy… we just have to listen with the ears of faith.

As Jesuit priest Fr. Josef Rodriguez said in a homily: "Jesus knew that the glory of Mt. Tabor could only make sense in the light of his eventual Resurrection. He’d [first] have to endure the Passion leading to another mountaintop: Calvary."

Jesus teaches his followers that the reign of God is like a buried treasure that a man found in a field and, rejoicing at his good fortune, then proceeded to sell all that he had to purchase that field. In another parable, Jesus says that God’s kingdom is like a merchant’s search for fine pearls. Once found, he sold everything else he owned and bought the “pearl of great price.”

The parable of the wheat and the weeds sets the classic battle between the good guys and the bad guys, the heroes and the villains, the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

Jesus delivers a powerful parable today about a sower, some seed, and various kinds of soil. The sower is Christ himself and his seed is the word of God. The soil is our hearts, and how we personally receive Christ’s seed and respond to his seed in our lives.  

Christ is the model for humility, for He has come to us not to be served but to serve and give his life in ransom for the many.  When we walk humbly with God, we commit ourselves to doing the Lord’s own will more than our own. 

Jesus speaks about openhearted hospitality in today’s gospel. He says anyone who offers as little as a cup of cold water to one of his disciples welcomes and serves Jesus himself. The problem is we don’t always recognize Jesus when he comes to our doorsteps, do we? 

To be afraid is human.  The grace of Christ, on the other hand, frees us from the chains of fear.  It gives us a confident trust in the providence of Christ. 

Why are you Catholic?  What motivates you to practice your faith? A vibrant, growing Church is an evangelizing Church, a community of disciples not afraid to proclaim and live the gospel to the hilt. 

The Body and Blood of Christ, our sacramental food and drink… this is the nourishment that fuels our souls, this is what gives us the spiritual energy we need to pray, to love, and to serve as Christ taught us.

We celebrate today the most basic truth of our Catholic faith, the mystery of three persons in one God. There are many ways to describe the mystery of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  

E pluribus unum… out of the many, there is one. This is such a great motto for our country.  On Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate this sacred formula here at Ave Maria Parish and the wider Church.