Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir… They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. (Mt 21:37-39)
Admirers of The Lord of the Rings will recall that great line J.R.R Tolkien put into the mouth of Gandalf the White when speaking to the Lord Denethor of Gondor: “Authority is not given to you, steward, to deny the return of the king”. Denethor was one in a long line of stewards whose duty it was to keep the kingdom secure until the rightful king would return. But Denethor had grown proud and lustful for power and his response to Gandalf portrays this: “The rule of Gondor is mine and no other’s”!
Tolkien, a faithful Catholic, once said that he despised allegory, yet even he could not prevent the Holy Spirit from working through his art to express Christian symbolism. In a way the exchange between Gandalf and Denethor points to the parable we read in this Sunday’s gospel, while along with this parable reaches far back to God’s original providence concerning man’s creation, existence, and purpose.
Recall the words of God to Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis; how God gave them dominion over the earth; how he commanded them to “cultivate and care for it”. God made them stewards of his magnificent creation and the first fruit of this stewardship was man’s naming all that was created (Gn 2:20); for he was made in the image of God’s mind and heart.
Sadly, we recall how our first parents were cast from their preternatural garden for being unfaithful stewards. Adam and Eve were caretakers of two holy trees – one for them (Life) and one for God (Knowledge or Revelation which belongs to God alone), but they forgot their stewardship and tried to usurp God’s tree for themselves. This was the first sin and man’s first failure of his stewardship which would be as a curse and harbinger to all men through all time who would, fallen from grace, make themselves kings of God’s domain in which they were meant tenderly to be children and heirs.
For this 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time we place on our bulletin cover a work by the Flemish painter Marten van Valckenborch entitled Parable of Wicked Husbandmen (1590). Valckenborch lived through the Beeldenstorm or the mob destruction of Catholic sacred images that occurred in 16th century Europe. Thus, he left Belgium for Aachen, France where he continued his landscape painting while taking up also religious allegory and symbolic painting of biblical parables.
Our painting is too panoramic for us to see the far left of the image where Valckenborch has painted the father in the parable sending off his son to take authority over the vineyard. In the right portion of the painting we see two workers carrying the plentiful fruit of the vineyard. In the bottom right of the image there are the tenants of the vineyard murdering the beloved son of the planter and owner of the vineyard. They are like those who to this day take from creation without sharing and who murder inside and outside of the womb.
Such self-proclaimed kings have declared themselves enemies of God and his Church. Let us pray for these enemies that they will remember that they were first made to be beloved children and heirs of the Creator.
-Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services