"The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit."

Growing the Kingdom of Heaven

My grandfather had a vineyard in a fertile valley of California, the Napa Valley. It was located only four miles from where I was born and I spent many a happy day there at that place we called 'the ranch'. My grandparents were hardworking immigrants from France, who settled at first in San Francisco, but eventually realized their dream of owning farm land in the heart of what has become known as the premier wine growing country of the world. The work of caring for those vines so that they would produce good fruit was hard and tedious at times. As I got older, I was able to help even if I didn't think that was a treat at that moment. My grandfather had great respect for the vines under his care and he was attentive to their needs at all cycles of their growth. Working alongside my grandfather and learning from him was precious to me, and I am nothing but grateful for that experience.

So maybe you can see why I relate to our readings for today. But digging deeper into the soil of these passages yields some great insights as to the workings of our God. We are planted as a people by God to be His vineyard. We are then called to grow this vineyard in conformity to God in order to produce good fruit. Now the image that Jesus uses abundantly in Matthew's gospel for this process is that of the Kingdom of heaven or equivalently the Kingdom of God. And thus much of the emphasis in Jesus' preaching and example is directed toward the growing of the Kingdom of heaven on earth. And so what is it we are to grow - how will we recognize it so that we can do the work that needs to be done in order that his kingdom yields the fruit that God is looking for?

Jesus tells us the plan when in another part of Matthew, Mt. 6:9 he teaches us his prayer: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven..." Thus what we build on earth, if it is truly to be the Kingdom of God, must mirror that which is the case in heaven. In heaven all things are ordered such that we can say that God is in control - that His will is accomplished perfectly. So on earth we need to keep this goal of God's will being done at the forefront of our endeavors as we set about building God's Kingdom here. God has given this to us as our primary mission on earth. Is this goal impossible or impractical as so many say. Do I really believe the task can be done or is it something that God has to do by Himself without us? Pope Benedict in his encyclical, "Saved in Hope", points us to an answer - "God's Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter situated in the future that will never arrive; His Kingdom is present wherever He is loved and wherever His love reaches us."

Now we are coming to the crux of this growing the Kingdom. What have we been doing to allow God's love to reach us; how have we loved God? Well, what have we done in the past? If you consider the biblical evidence, we haven't been doing all that well. In the OT we see an enduring conflict from the beginning of Genesis to the destruction of the temple of a constant turning away from building the Kingdom that God wants, one that mirrors heaven, to building our own kingdom that puts us at the center of creation. In modern times this continues. As Pope Benedict points out (ibid), we have for the past 400 years or so followed a faith best articulated by Frances Bacon, the father of the scientific age. This faith is a faith in progress. In his vision as we pile up one scientific discovery upon another, a new world will emerge - the kingdom of man - where we will overcome nature and subdue it for our own benefit. Progress is the overcoming of all dependency whether they be the vicissitudes of nature or the will of God. The structures we put in place to accomplish this is that of reason and that of freedom. In this philosophy reason alone is a force of good and a force for good. Thus if we base our faith in progress upon reason alone, we will achieve the freedom from all restraints and thus be led into that utopian world, the kingdom of man. We don't have to be much of a student of history to know that where this idea has been vigorously pursued, it has failed miserably. Instead of a heaven on earth, it has yielded hell on earth. Recall the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution or the communist revolution in Russia. Yet such things are being pursued to this day under different guises. Our readings for today warn of exactly these things. Unless we select the proper cornerstone, we will not be able to build the Kingdom of God. In other words, we cannot build the Kingdom of God by our own efforts - what we build will always be the kingdom of man - a failed enterprise.

So what should we do? It is simply what Jesus tells us - allow God to enter into our enterprise. We cannot begin to know what God's will is for us unless we invite him in to talk to us, to show us the way, to be our guide. But God does not enter unless we, in a sense, give Him permission. Our Blessed Mother, Mary, is our model for this. Look at the astounding gift we received when Mary said yes, "may it be done to me according to your word." We too as individuals and as a society must give our permission that God enter our project of building the kingdom. Indeed we are ourselves to build the structures that guide our growing the kingdom, but these structures must be oriented to God, or else, like our selfish desires, like our faith in progress, they will lead to destruction. The primary structure we have for our guide is the Church. And we see even there that some of our attempts have been faulty, but because this structure is built on the cornerstone of Christ, we have a community of saints, like St. Francis, to call us back to repair he Church so we can move forward.

And so as individuals and as a society, we must allow God in His love to come into our lives. If you are sick, allow God in; if you are afraid, allow God in; if you are cold of heart, allow God in; if your family is failing, allow God in; if you are distressed in your job, allow God in. As St. Paul tells us today from his prison cell shortly before he was to die - "Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and minds in Christ Jesus." As a society we are to do what our hymn, "We are Called"' exhorts of us - "We are called to act with justice, we are called to love tenderly, we are called to serve one another; to walk humbly with God."

I learned a lot working with my grandfather in his vineyard. May we all reap the reward of working in our Father's vineyard growing the Kingdom of heaven.