This is Cardinal Francis George. I invite you to join me for the next two minutes to reflect

with Father Robert Barron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire. Word on Fire Catholic

Ministries is a non-profit ministry at the forefront of Catholic evangelization, using

new media to spread the faith and every continent. Father Barron challenges us to open our hearts

to the Word on Fire, which is God's Word of Love for each of us. If our hearts are open,

the Lord can change and transform us so that we might speak with love about the one who

is love. The global benefactors of Word on Fire with the support of the Archdiocese of

Chicago now present Word on Fire. Peace be with you.

Friends, our Gospel today from the 21st chapter of Matthew gives us one of Jesus' really

great parables, a parable that is rooted in a much earlier image from the prophet Isaiah

and that's the passage that's our first reading. Isaiah's sort of version of this story and

has to do with a vineyard planted by a landowner. Now we're dealing here with kind of a straight

forward allegory. You know where every character and element in the story is meant to correspond

pretty directly to something in the spiritual order. So we have to just unpack the meaning

of this allegory and then we can unpack the spiritual power of this thing. So Jesus says to

the chief priest and elders of the people. So the audience matters first, doesn't it? He's

addressing the kind of leadership, the religious establishment. He says, here are another parable.

There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. Well, harkening back to Isaiah, we know that

this has to do with God who plants the vineyard of Israel. And there's so much going on here,

isn't there? That's the whole purpose of Israel in God's economy of salvation. He forms a people

after his own heart, after his own mind, a people that would think like him and act like him

and love like him. And they in turn, by the very attractiveness of their life, would draw the

...