Septuagesima Sunday – February 5, 2012
(Epistle: 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27, 10, 1-5; Gospel: Matthew 20: 1-16)
The three weeks before Ash Wednesday are to prepare us for Lent and following this, for the joy of Easter. These weeks seem to have originated in the Eastern Church. You won’t hear the Alleluia now until Holy Thursday, or if you attend the Mass of a saint’s feastday. This is in preparation for our Lord’s Passion and His Resurrection on Easter. Septuagesima means seventy and this Sunday is approximately 70 days from Easter Sunday. Yves, Bishop of Chartres, France, (d. 1116) wrote of this time that our souls groan within ourselves at seeing us made subject to vanity through the fall of Adam and Eve. And our souls are in pain in longing to be in Christ’s Kingdom, which is still so far off. This is the season to get a clear understanding of the misery of our banishment from the Garden of Eden.
It’s easy for us to become indifferent to praying and to the liturgy of the Church. Liturgy means the way we worship God, in a certain order and certain forms given to us by the authority of Christ’s Church. It is easy to become indifferent to the rules of His Church regarding fasting and attending Mass. Before the fall of our first parents we could walk and talk with God, but now we have to fight the devil all our lives to get to see God at the end of our lives. Use these 70 days before Easter to develop habits of holiness by praying, fasting, going to Confession and attending Mass and receiving Communion as often as possible, but always on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. The Church and Her priests are here to show you the way to heaven.
Today’s Introit describes the fears of death: “The groans of death surrounded me, and the sorrows of hell encompassed me: and in my affliction I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice from his holy temple.” We have been tormented by this since Adam’s fall. But the same God Who threw us out of the Garden of Eden and Whom we sin against, also sent His Son to redeem us.
The Householder in today’s Gospel is of course God. His vineyard is the Church. He sends out workers to his vineyard at all hours, and never ceases to send them out; from the beginning it was the Patriarchs and Teachers of the Law, and lastly the Apostles and their successors. The workers of the early morning, the third, sixth and ninth hours “signify the Jewish people, who . . . have from the beginning of the world endeavored to serve God . . . But at the eleventh hour the Gentiles were called, and it is to them it was said: ‘Why stand you here all the day idle?’”
Consider what they answered: “Because no man hath hired us.” What does this mean except that no man has preached to us the way of true life? The Lord has hired all of us, but what if at our judgment He asks, “Why did you stand idle?” We are members of His Church, some of us since the cradle. We don’t have the same excuse as those men in the Gospel.
These hours in the parable can also be seen as the years of our lives. Morning is the childhood of our reason. The third hour, adolescence, because while the heat of youth increases it is as though the sun mounts higher in the sky. The sixth hour is young manhood and womanhood, because the sun is now at its zenith when we are at our full strength. The ninth hour is our mature age because as the sun now declines so does the heat of youth. The eleventh hour is our old age. Some are called to the good life in their young years, others in adulthood, others later in life and still others in old age. Laborers are called at different hours to the Vineyard. We should all look to our manner of living then to see if we are really laboring the Vineyard of the Lord. Those who live for themselves and feed on the pleasures of the flesh are truly rebuked as idle because they do not work for the fruit of divine labor.
St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians today speaks of our lives as a race, that we should run to win, and the prize we seek is the incorruptible crown of eternal life with God. Paul was aware that he might lose this race, so he chastised his body and kept it in subjection to the spirit. We have an inclination to sin. It is an effect of the Original Sin of Adam and Eve and defines the human condition, that is, it makes us what we are. Our only means of winning the race is to subject our bodies to the spirit. This is a very harsh doctrine. We know that it is difficult, to say the least, to make an impression on those whose happiness is fixed only on the things of this present life. “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 1: 1) For these people we pray.
The Good Thief came to his senses about these things at the very end of his life. We don’t know whether he had minutes or hours to live, but he won the race of life and was paid the promised reward shortly after he confessed God from his cross. Every event in our Lord’s life is a lesson on Eternity. From this brief conversation with the Good Thief we know that God’s eye is always on those who work and suffer. This truth is expressed in the Gradual prayer in today’s Mass: “A helper in due time, in tribulation: let them trust in thee, who know thee, for thou does not forsake them that seek thee, O Lord.”
Today’s Gospel is also a message to the Jews that salvation is about to be offered to the Gentiles, that the Law of Moses will give way to the Christian Law through the preaching of the Apostles. Dom Guéranger points this out: “By the selfish murmuring made against the master of the house by the early laborers, our Lord signifies the indignation which the scribes and Pharisees would show at the Gentiles being adopted as God’s children. He shows them how their jealousy would be chastised: Israel, that had labored before us, shall be rejected for their obduracy [hardness] of heart, and we Gentiles, the last comers, shall be made first, for we shall be made members of that Catholic Church, which is the bride of the Son of God.” This is the interpretation given by Sts. Augustine and Gregory the Great and other fathers of the Church, but it also contains within it the second instruction, and that is that God invites each of us individually and personally to labor in His Vineyard for the promised payment. We should remind ourselves, also, that God does not promise us a second call if we excuse ourselves from answering the first. +++
Do not let His blood fall uselessly on your soul.
(Dom Guéranger)
We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass
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