The parable of the talents
Today’s gospel is about another parable in a series of parables that the Holy Mother Church wants all of her children to learn and internalize so we would all be able to understand the ways of God and eventually realize that submitting to God’s will is the ultimate way to Love God. Indeed, man’s ways are totally different from the ways of God.
This is why we have the Holy Bible given to us with stories from the Old Testament or the Jewish Torah, which starts from Genesis to Abraham, Noah, Moses, Judges, the Psalms, Ezekiel, and Isaiah and all the way to the New Testament beginning with the life, passion, death and the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Theologians say that the Holy Bible is Divinely inspired, which is why we should read it regularly and ponder on them.
Somehow, this gospel today sums up the entire Old Testament in one conversation between our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Messiah as prophesied in Isaiah and many prophets before him, all the way to John the Baptist. But alas, the Chief Priests and the Elders were so blinded by their own misconceptions of God’s will that in the end Jesus bluntly tells them that this Parable of the Talents that he was telling them actually referred to them. You can read this Parable in your Bibles in Matt. 21: 33-43.
“[Jesus said to the Chief Priests and the Elders of the people] 33 “Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. 34 When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain its produce.
35 But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned. 36 Again he sent other servants more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. 37 Finally, he sent his son to them thinking. ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another. ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.
39 They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes? 41 They answered him; “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” 42 Jesus said to them, “Did you never read it in scriptures;
‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes? 43 Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
***
This parable is one of the easiest to interpret because at the end of this parable, our Lord Jesus Christ tells the Chief Priests and Elders in no uncertain terms, “Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” Surely this is one of the reasons why in the end, the Chief Priests and the Elders of the Jews hated our Lord Jesus Christ so much, they plotted to arrest, try and crucify our Lord for telling the truth about them. Come to think of it… today the truth is still just as painful when we tell it to our corrupt political leaders, who lie before the public in the hope that the people would accept their lies.
The Chief Priests and Elders who are the Jewish Religious leaders in those days got their authority from God, directly from “The Chair of Moses.” As a way of testing their faith in God, God sent numerous messengers or prophets into their midst to warn them that they were not following God’s will. In the end, instead of obeying the prophets sent by God, they instead killed the prophets and the most famous one is John the Baptist.
If you read the stories of the numerous prophets that are featured in the Old Testament, it is a story of violence and death for God’s prophets. Indeed the tenants of God’s vineyard are the Chief Priests, the Scribes and the Elders of the Jews and when God sends his messengers to collect their produce, they kill them. Finally, God sent his only Begotten Son believing that they would listen to him and be awed by his wonderful miracles that our Lord does in their midst. But they were blinded with hate they had the Son of God scourged and then crucified.
As we read in John 3:16, our Lord Jesus Christ told Nicodemus, “God so loved the world, he sent his only begotten Son into the world so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” This is a clear message to all of us, who are called “Children of God” who believes that there is life after death… that we can earn our way to eternal only if we believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and obey his teachings and follow God’s will.
- Latest
