This crucifix in the chapel of San Damiano in Assisi said to Francis:
“Repair My Church!”
October 2, 2011, 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 5:1-7 Philippians 4:6-9 Matthew 21:33-43
First reading: a vineyard in need of repair
Listen while I sing you this song, a song of my friend and his vineyard: My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside; he spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines. He built a tower to guard them, dug a pit for treading the grapes. He waited for the grapes to ripen, but every grape was sour. So now my friend says, “You people who live in Jerusalem and Judah, judge between my vineyard and me. Is there anything I failed to do for it? Then why did it produce sour grapes and not the good grapes I expected? “Here is what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge around it, break down the wall that protects it, and will let wild animals eat it and trample it down. I will let it be overgrown with weeds. I will not trim the vines or hoe the ground; instead, I will let briers and thorns cover it. I will even forbid the clouds to let rain fall on it.” Israel is the vineyard of the Lord Almighty; the people of Judah are the vines He planted. He expected them to do what was good, but instead they committed murder.
The Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew
Glory to you, Lord.
Another vineyard in need of repair
Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: "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. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way.
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. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?" They answered him, "He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the harvest." Jesus said to them, "Did you never read in the 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[1]? 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."
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
Tuesday October 4: Feast day of St. Francis
On the 3rd and 4th of October a veritable Pentecost of people from every corner of the earth always gathers in Assisi. Such an immense and diverse crowd suggests that a very remarkable event happened a long time ago in that mountainside village. There in 1182 was born St. Francis of Assisi. He was so remarkable that freethinker Ernest Renan called him "the only perfect Christian since Christ." English writer Oscar Wilde also needed an exaggeration to characterize the Saint: "There were Christians before Christ, but there haven't been any since. I make one exception: in 1182 was born St. Francis of Assisi." The exaggerations go on and on: In 1182 was born “the first great pacifist,” or “the first great Californian” (reference to the old Franciscan missions of the West), or even “the first great hippie.” Former Governor of New York State, Mario Cuomo, in his keynote address to the National Democratic Convention in 1984 in San Francisco (the city named after the saint) called Francis “the world’s first true Democrat.”
The man born in Assisi was so remarkable that the US government printed a stamp in 1982 commemorating the 800th anniversary of the birth of Francis. And the village of his birth also became remarkable: three times Pope John Paul II summoned all the world’s religions to convene in Assisi and to summit there with him for the peace of the world. The last time they assembled was on January 24, 2002, in response to September 11. Francis died on October 3, 1224, in the 42nd year of his life. His feast day is this coming Tuesday, October 4.
A love-affair
The first reading from Isaiah is a story of a love -affair between a farmer and his vineyard. The farmer spares no effort to construct a splendid vineyard for himself. He buys a fertile piece of land on a hillside. He clears away the stones, he tills the soil and then goes in search of a good stock of vine, which he carefully plants and skillfully prunes. Then he builds an imposing watchtower to guard his beloved vineyard from poachers, and he finishes it off with a wine press. There the harvesters will stomp from the grapes the nectar of human celebration.
As a parable, it’s a love story between the Lord of hosts and the people of Israel. But it’s a love story gone sour: “You people who live in Jerusalem and Judah, judge between my vineyard and me. Is there anything I failed to do for it? Then why did it produce sour grapes and not the good grapes I expected?”
Not defining but describing the Church
The pre-Vatican II catechism defined the Church basically as a “monarchical and hierarchical institution,” united by the profession of the same faith, by participation in the seven sacraments, and by obedience especially to the Bishop of Rome – the Pope. The old pre-Vatican II definition concentrated on the Church as an institution. At the end of the day, it’s very difficult to have a love-affair with a “monarchical and hierarchical institution!”
Vatican II took great strides to fix the problem. In its stellar document Lumen Gentium[2] the Council chose not to define but rather to describe the Church by means of various biblical images: The Church is a sheepfold and Jesus is the door to that sheepfold. (Jn 10:1-10; Is. 40:11) The Church is an edifice, and the Lord likened Himself to its cornerstone. (I Cor. 3: 9; Acts 4:11) The Church is the bride of Christ, and St. Paul tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave His life for her. (Eph 5:25)
Finally, the Council described the Church as a vineyard. It cites both today’s first reading from Isaiah (5: 1-7) and today’s gospel from Matthew (21: 33-43): “The Church has been cultivated and pruned by the heavenly Vinedresser, Jesus, as his beloved vineyard.” (Lumen Gentium.Ch. I, no. 6) Sheepfold, edifice, bride of Christ and vineyard are Scriptural images for the Church, and it’s much easier to have a love-affair with them than with a “monarchical and hierarchical institution.”
St. Francis – “Repair my Church!”
In the first reading from Isaiah, the vineyard wasn’t producing good grapes, and was in great need of repair. The Church in various periods of its history, like the vineyard, was in great need of repair. That was the case of the Medieval Church of St. Francis’ time (1182 –1226). One day Francis was praying before a crucifix[3] in a rickety little chapel of San Damiano in Assisi. He was in the 23rd year of his life, and was earnestly asking the Lord to tell him what he should do with his young life. Suddenly he heard a voice coming from the crucifix saying, “Francis, repair my Church.” Literal man that he was, he thought the voice was speaking about the dilapidated chapel of San Damiano. So he set out to repair it with mortar and brick. As history was later to show, the voice was calling Francis to be the father of a great family of brothers and sisters who down through the centuries would repair not a rickety little chapel but a Church Universal falling into ruin.
Capuchin O'Malley -- “Repair my Church!”
In 2003 Pope John Paul II appointed Capuchin Bishop Sean Patrick O'Malley to be the next shepherd of the Archdiocese of Boston.[4] He was to succeed Cardinal Bernard Law who resigned amid a scandal of clergy sex-abuse which plagued that archdiocese for 18 months nonstop. Before his installation as Archbishop of Boston, O'Malley met with the victims of clergy sex-abuse, with bishops, chancery employees and with the media. Standing there in his coffee-brown habit and sandaled feet before a sea of reporters and television cameras, he said, “I address you, my fellow Catholics of Boston, with those words that inspired St. Francis when the crucified Lord said to him, `Repair my church.’” Then departing from the prepared text O’Malley begged the crowd saying, “I ask you and plead with you: repair my church.”
Jesuit Henri Boulad -- “Repair my Church!”
In the 16th century the Church, reacting to the Protestant Revolution, summoned the Council of Trent (1545-1563) to restore the Lord’s Vineyard fallen into ruin. Four centuries later, Pope John XXIII summoned the Church to Vatican II (1962-1965) to restore the Lord’s Vineyard again fallen into ruin. Today, 46 years after Vatican II, the Vineyard of the Lord is again in need of restoration! That’s the age-old story of the Church as an institution: it constantly falls into ruin and constantly needs restoring.
In a personal and lengthy letter to Pope Benedict (circulated worldwide in January of 2010) Jesuit Fr. Henri Boulad[5] issued a S.O.S. for today’s post-Vatican II Church which, he says, is again fallen into ruin and again in great need of restoration. The letter in part reads:
Dear Holy Father, I am addressing you directly because my heart bleeds at the sight of the abyss into which our Church is sinking today. Please excuse my frankness that is filial and dictated both by the “freedom of the children of God” to which St. Paul has called us as well as by my passionate love for the Church. Perhaps you will excuse the alarmist tone of this letter, for I believe that it is already the eleventh hour and that confronting the present situation must not be further delayed.
Religious practice is in constant decline. The churches of Europe and Canada are only frequented by an increasing number of aging people who will soon be gone. There will be nothing left to do but close churches or transform them into museums, mosques, club houses or municipal libraries - something that is already under way. What surprises me is that many churches are already in the process of renovation and modernization at great expense in order to attract the faithful. But it is not such things that will stop the exodus.
In the matter of morality and ethics, the injunctions of the Magisterium, repeated ad nauseam on marriage, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, divorce and remarriage, etc. touch nobody and only engender weariness and indifference. All these moral and pastoral problems deserve more than preemptory declarations. They deserve an approach that is pastoral, sociological, psychological and humane. They deserve an approach in a way more in keeping with the Gospel.
Boulad says it’s the eleventh hour (“time is galloping at an ever rapid pace”), and he tells Benedict,
When people notice something wrong or dysfunctional in any commercial enterprise they immediately question what’s happening, call in the experts, make corrections, and mobilize all their forces to address the crisis. Why can’t the Church do the same thing? Why not mobilize all her living forces for a radical aggiornamento[6]? Why? Could it be just sluggishness, cowardice, pride, lack of imagination and creativity, culpable passivity – all in the hope that the Lord will take care of everything, and that the Church well knows best about such things? Christ warned us in the gospel, “The children of this world are shrewder in handling their affairs than are the children of light.” (Lk 16: 8)
Conclusion
The great Franciscan family
Before the San Damiano crucifix commanding Francis to repair the Church were born the first stirrings of the great Franciscan family. The Francis Book published on the 800th anniversary of his death gives an impressive list of people who make up the great family: there are the Friars Minor, the Conventuals, the Capuchins, the Third Order Regulars (e.g. the School Sisters of St. Francis), the Poor Clares, the Secular Franciscans, the Anglican Franciscans, and yes, even the Lutheran Franciscans! Down through the centuries, that great family of brothers and sisters has done more to repair the Lord's Vineyard than did the strident Luther nailing his 95 theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg on Halloween in 1517
The Franciscan family is not strident. Rather it is a melodious crowd of brothers and sisters who in every age, hear the voice coming from the San Damiano crucifix, and in every age heed the voice by going forth and repairing the Lord’s Vineyard in their very own special and peculiar way.
[1] Psalm 117: 22-23; Acts 4:11
[2] Lumen Gentium is the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. It opens with the words Lumen Gentium: “The light of the nation is Christ.”
[3] The crucifix, the work of an unknown artist of the Umbrian School, was an icon of Christ in glory painted on canvas and applied to a walnut wooden cross. To this very day that crucifix is carefully preserved in the Basilica of St. Clare in Assisi, and is considered to be the most renowned and reproduced crucifix in the world.
[5] Fr. Henri Boulad, an Egyptian Jesuit, is superior of the Jesuits in Alexandria, regional superior of all the Jesuits in Egypt, professor of theology in Cairo, director of Caritas-Egypt, and vice-president of Caritas Internationalis for the Middle East and North Africa.
[6] Italian for “updating.” Pope John XXIII said his Vatican II Council was meant to be an aggiornamento .of the Church.
