Scripture Reflections for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

“God gave his whole heart to his people but his people have not responded”

“One of the ways we can cultivate peace, finding this new center, is to bathe ourselves as it were in those things that are redolent of God.”

"Carey Anne Moylan grew up in Sydney and was educated by the Mercy Sisters at Spiritus Sanctus, North Ryde and Monte Sant Angelo in North Sydney. She studied at Sydney..."

"The Abbey church was filled. There was a silent excitement as we waited for the concert to start. Then exquisite music resonated for over an hour as people who could..."

"Robert Burns’s famed lament appears to be equally true of God’s plans. The Lord has planted a vineyard on a fine spot, ‘a very fertile hill’, walled about and protected,..."

"The First Reading and the Gospel are closely connected. They both made use of the image of the vineyard. Isaiah sees in Israel the vineyard the Lord loved and expected..."

"So I went back to the first reading and read it over and over again. This time, it became clear how relevant the message was in my own life. How..."

“Thus, the poem in Isaiah 5:1-7, understood in light of broader Scriptural themes, is a love story. The vineyard is a metaphor for the spouse of the Lord, his beloved people. Ultimately it points forward to the Bride of Christ.”

"One of the glories of our country, and indeed of every country where God has established the Christian Faith, is the cathedrals. “Prayer in stone”, these wonderful buildings encapsulate the..."

"It’s engraved on the front cover of my leather-bound prayer journal – Philippians 4:6. The journal is a gift I received from my wife, and the verse, one that I’ve..."

"Planting a vineyard is planting for a relationship. A vineyard is a long-term investment, a labour that will not yield its grapes, and more importantly its wine, for several years...."

"This Sunday, the first in the month of October, in Dominican churches was celebrated as Rosary Sunday until the calendar was reformed in the 1960s. So now we celebrate the..."

"Who does this earth belong to? In this era of globalization and migration, to whom does the vineyard belong? In the first reading from Isaiah, we hear that “the vineyard..."

"In first century Galilee, vineyards looked very like the vineyard in today’s parable. The hedge was for keeping out predators and the watch tower for dissuading intruders. In Nazareth, archaeologists..."

"In our readings today there is a contrast between the extravagant violence of the gospel parable ‘they seized the servants, thrashed one, killed another, stoned a third.’ and the calm..."

"There is a story of two politicians engaged in conversation, and one asks the other, ‘But how do you know for sure you’ve got power, unless you abuse it?’"

"As I sit at my window, angry sounds float up from the street below – not, this time, another demo (the European Commission is just across the park) but the..."

"Not all the parables of Jesus show us how to live. Some merely describe the world as it is, and sometimes those descriptions can be frightening. This is the case..."

“How are we tending the vineyard? We who receive so much from God.”

“We don't own the world...we don't own the Church. Rather, these things are leased out to us. We are there to watch them, tend them, keep guard but we don't own them.”

“Do we have this within us, to carry forth to the nations this great message of the God of Israel that comes to its fulfillment, its full fruition in the crucified and risen savior?”

“What goes wrong? I forget this principle. I forget that every breath I take is from God and for God. I forget that every degree that I ever earned is from God and for God. I forget that my family is from God, therefore for God.”

“Your breath, your body, your creativity, your skills, the world that you live and move in, the beauties around it, that's what Jesus is telling us here: we don't own it”