This parable directs our attention towards the Passion of our Lord. In it we heard that “they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.”
It is on Palm Sunday as well as Good Friday when our Gospel reading is taken from an account of our Lord’s Passion. The option which is most often used is the one in which the people get to take part within the reading. Thus the priest reads the words of Christ, there is a narrator of the text, a voice which is used for the various figures, and finally the people who join together in one voice.
The most striking of these responses which is given by the people is “crucify Him.” They not only cry this out on one occasion, but continue to cry it out all the louder: “Crucify Him. Crucify Him.”
These words are not just the voice of a certain people at the given time of our Lord’s Passion. Rather these words continue to ring true for us in this day and age. These words serve as a reminder of our rejection of Him through our participation in sin where these words take on meaning within our own life.
Saint Gianna Molla stated: “If one were to consider how much Jesus has suffered, one would not commit the smallest sin.”
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 598:
“We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins. Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts (for he is in them) and hold him up to contempt. We, profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him.391
Nor did demons crucify him; it is you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.392”
It is us who shout out “crucify Him” as we turn away from God through our participation in sin. Society accepts the killing of the unborn and thus we cry out “crucify him.” Through senseless acts of violence such as those seen in Las Vegas these words are uttered, “crucify him.” “Crucify him” is repeated as society continues to embrace the breakdown of the family and those so many souls are pulled away from the Gospel.
In our own life we shout out “crucify him” as we participate in our sin. Sin is our rejection of Christ and thus our demand that he go on to be crucified. To fathom the role that we play in the death of our Lord and yet we avoid the Sacrament of Confession which brings healing unto our soul. By rejecting the healing mercy of this sacrament we cry out “crucify him” as we proclaim that we want nothing to do with his healing mercy as we persevere in the death of sin.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen stated: “I wonder if our Lord suffers more from our indifference than he did from the Crucifixion.”
Let us therefore allow nothing to destroy the fruit that we have been called upon to bring into the world. May we not be indifferent to the Gospel message, but truly fall in love with Christ. Let us not reject Him and putting Him to death through our actions, but rather may we come to embrace Him by how we live out our life on this earth in service to the Gospel.
