Privilege vs. Fruitfulness!

Friday, March 6, 2026

Gen 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a; Mt 21: 33-43, 45-46

Today’s Gospel highlights the battle between privilege and fruitfulness.

As with any parable, Jesus constructs it in a way that it uncovers the deeper tensions and issues. 

In The Parable of the Tenants, the ‘tenants’ forget that they are the entrusted caretakers of the vineyard, which is the landowner’s prized possession. The landowner carefully plants it, fences it, digs a winepress in it, and builds a watchtower. The landowner’s careful attention indicates that he trusted the tenants with the vineyard, his cherished possession. 

Nevertheless, it is this vineyard that the tenants want to take over from the landowner. The selfish plot is not only symbolic of their greed but also their criminality, as is evident in their beating and killing of the landowner’s servants. On the part of the wicked tenants who stoop too low to grab the vineyard, it is a blot on their integrity, and therefore, it is a moral failure. 

Moreover, beyond the aspect of moral failure, there is also the theological failure in the way the wicked tenants attempt a violent takeover of the vineyard. When we understand the landowner to be God Himself, it means that they deny God’s ownership and seek autonomy over the property that is not theirs. In what they do, they mimic the sin of the First Parents, who wanted ‘to be like God’ (Gen 3). 

When we forget our vocation, needless confusions arise. When swept away by selfish desires, the soul becomes corrupt with greed. The only way to remedy the situation is to remember that we are tenants whose responsibility is to produce fruit at the appointed time. Sin finds its way in when we forget this truth and begin to act otherwise.

In sum, Jesus makes it clear that we inherit the Kingdom not by privilege but by fruitfulness.

Let us pray that we may always remember that the purpose of our vocation is to produce fruits at the right time. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar