Today, Fr. Jack Ledwon makes his debut on UBCatholic.com. ?Fr. Jack is the Director of Campus Ministry and the Pastor of St. Joseph University Parish on the South Campus. ?We welcome him to UBCatholic.com and look forward to his many upcoming reflections. ?You can contact Fr. Jack by emailing him. ?Today Fr. Jack shares with us his homily from the Mass of the Holy Spirit, which was also the Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. ?For a list of the readings you can click here.
SEPTEMBER 18, 2011
I have always wondered whenever I heard this parable of the vineyard owner that was just proclaimed:? ?Why did he keep going out to hire more workers throughout the day??? ?Why didn?t he just hire more the first time he went to the marketplace??
So this week I had a conversation with a parishioner who owns a small vineyard in Chautauqua County.? He suggested that perhaps, like himself in past growing seasons, the owner realized that the job was just not getting done and would not be completed unless there were more workers in the field as soon as possible.
Now this parishioner owns a small 7 acre vineyard that has been in his family for years. ?Annually it produces pounds of grapes 90,000 lbs. or 45 tons on four thousand vines yielding 140 fifty gallon barrels or 7,000 gallons of wine. ?He went on to say that wine production involves very short periods of very intense labor ? followed by long periods of patiently waiting for the rain and the sun and soil to do their work. ?But when harvest time comes then time is critical. ?Almost all grapes have to be harvested by hand because as soon as the skin is broken the fermentation process begins. ?Only concord grapes can be picked by machine?and it only takes one and half hour to harvest 40 tons of concords?or about one ton in five minutes.
Picking all other grapes is labor intensive. ?It takes 8 hours for one person to pick one ton by hand. ?Now maybe that?s more than you ever wanted to know about grape harvesting, but it does explain why the vineyard owner in the gospel keeps recruiting more personnel.
Obviously Jesus is not giving a lesson in agricultural science, but rather as in all his parables he is telling a story for another purpose. ?He is using the vineyard setting as an analogy for life -personal life, communal life,?and in our celebration today we can even extend that to academic life, ecclesial life, all human life.
Just as certain conditions are necessary for a successful crop of grapes -conditions such as the quality of the soil,?the right amounts of rain and sunshine,?the presence of certain nutrients and fertilizer,?and, of course, the human element of hard work. ?So also in human life ? personal, communal, academic, ecclesial ? certain conditions are necessary to create and sustain life.
When I was going off to do doctoral studies in medieval music some thirty-five years ago, Father Pat gave me a little framed piece of calligraphy with a quote from the twelfth century.?Formerly attributed to a scholar named Bernard of Chartres, it is more 1141recently regarded as a quote from Hugh of St. Victor a writer who died in, but whose words in the third book of his Didascalion: The Method and Form of Study offer some timely advice for anyone in the twenty-first century who seeks to grow in knowledge, understanding, and even wisdom.? We?e reprinted this on the back cover your Mass program.? He writes:
Mens humilis, studium quaerendi, vita quieta,
scrutinium tacitum, paupertas, terra aliena,
haec reserare solent multis obscura legendo.
Which can be translated as:
?A humble mind, eagerness to inquire, a quiet life,
silent scrutiny, poverty, foreign soil;
these, for many, unlock the hidden places of learning.
Yes, according to this medieval scholar these conditions were necessary for the mind and the spirit to flourish. ?Could Hugh of St. Victor be more on target, more relevant, and more insightful with advice not only for his time, but maybe even more so for ours? ??Let?s look at them again:
??A humble mind? approaches life as a mystery that we will never completely comprehend.
?Eagerness to inquire? seeks a willingness always to ask the next question.
?A quiet life? and ?silent scrutiny? demand the space and time for thought and reflection, uninterrupted by the demands and distractions of life and the world.
?Poverty? posits a certain detachment from all the comforts of life that can insulate us from seeing other possibilities.
?Foreign soil? gives us that distance needed to see things from a perspective other than the usual and familiar.
Isn?t everything he says is required for growing in knowledge, understanding and wisdom completely the opposite of what we find in our own zeitgeist, or spirit of our times??We can be proud of the fact that everything we need to know we can find, almost instantaneously,?in the convenience of our office on the internet,?and this will provide us with more than we need?so we can move on to doing other more pressing,?or at least enjoyable activities.
Let me say this again:?We can be proud (?not a humble mind?) of the fact that everything we need to know we can find,?almost easily (?not an eagerness to enquire?),?in the convenience of our office on the Internet (?not a foreign soil?),?and this will provide us with more than we need (?not poverty?)?so we can move on to doing other more pressing, or at least enjoyable activities (?not a quiet life?).
Now some may say that we of the 21st century technological world are so far advanced beyond the ?primitive world? of the middle ages that their logic has nothing to offer us. ?I would suggest that nothing could be further from the truth. ?These medieval authors were surprisingly contemporary, not only in the content of their thought, but even in their methods and their styles of writing.
Yes quill and vellum is different from mouse and screen, but the place where men like Hugh of St. Victor and Bernard of Chartres wrote their medieval treatises, the scriptorium, was a room filled with monks each laboring at their own desk in isolation. ?At a glance it probably looked very much like a contemporary work space filled with cubicles with modern ?worker bees? each glued to their own computer screen and keyboard. ?Even to the fact that like the quiet hum produced by our PC?s the monks did not copy their treatises in silence, but whispered the words to themselves as they wrote filling the space with and audible buzz.
Oh and our recent invention of texting with abbreviations (LOL, OMG, LMAO ? it was only letters, I can say that in church) is nothing new at all.? To save space on the precious and expensive vellum the medieval scribes used abbreviations as often as possible. DNS with a line over it was recognized by everyone as the three syllable word Dominus!
But I stray again?back to the vineyard. ?Our vineyards ? university, church, life. ?We are the workers what is the vineyard! ?Our patron Cardinal, now Blessed, John Newman saw no contradiction between the work of the mind and the work of the soul. ?Each seeks to delve more deeply into the Mystery which is the sum of all mysteries. ?Whether we pursue, truth, wisdom, goodness, beauty, joy, or peace, ?they are all facets of what the believer understands to be the mystery of God. ?No one area can exhaust the reality of the mystery, ?no one person can comprehend the entirety of the mystery, ?for it is our common and our universal mission and desire to explore.
Beauty, truth, love, joy, peace,?which we labor to create, to experience, and to share?in small, provisional ways, sometimes in our isolated silos?and sometimes in our collaborative pursuits?are facets of this Mystery beyond all mysteries. ?The believer would call this mystery God,?but then all too often make the mistake of presuming that?this naming brings with it complete understanding. ?No, no, for the other absolutely necessary requirement for the flourishing of the spirit in academia, in the church, in life is HUMILITY!
Which that other medieval saint ? Hildegard of Bingen ?Called the Queen of the Virtues! This brings us to a few of final lessons from the vineyard: ?Critical -Trim the grapes after harvest and before the next ?spring ? 95% of what grew is cut out, chopped up or burned. Only the first year wood produces fruit. ??An incredible amount of growth and energy.?Complete renewal every year, ?Nothing except the trunk that remains the same,?the branches are new every year?(Jesus says ?I am the vine, you are the branches?)
So be productive while you?re here.?Whether freshman, graduate student, full professor, administrator, or pending emeritus,?Be productive this year!? Be productive this year in your field. ?And, of course, it goes without saying that there is always?a cost to discipleship, a cost to scholarship. ?No one becomes fabulously wealthy by being a scholar, by being a minister, by being a disciple, be being a servant.
In wine production there is a saying:?Do you know how to make a small fortune owning a vineyard?? Start out with a large fortune!
In a couple of weeks thirty volunteers will descend on those seven acres in Chautauqua County to pick grapes,?Some will pick two trays (lugs) full and some will pick thirty trays.
But at the end of the day they will all sit down to a great feast and all will be served ample amounts of delicious food and drink with no rationing for the amount of work done.? Even the last and the least will receive as much.
The gospel all over again. ?It?s like the image in the Hebrew Scriptures of Wisdom?s banquet. ?Lady Wisdom sets her table and calls out to her children: ??Come and eat of my food and drink of my wine.?Choice foods and fine wines.? Come to the table I prepare for you.??This year again we are called to work in our field and then feast!
CHEERS!?
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Source: http://ubcatholic.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/workers-in-the-vineyard/
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