Category: Ordinary Time Year A

The vineyard was a pre-eminent metaphor for the people of Israel.

“My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside,” we read in today’s First Reading (Is 5:1).

Again, in today’s Responsorial Psalm, we sing: “You brought a vine out of Egypt. It stretched out its branches to the sea.” (Ps 79)

And our Gospel begins: “Listen, there was a landowner who planted a vineyard.” (Mt 21:33–43)

I had to catch myself when singing the Psalm. I almost sang, “You brought a vine out of Le Havre.”

Le Havre is a port city on the north-west coast of France. From this port, the French Marists set sail for the Pacific, including Aotearoa New Zealand.

These French missionaries brought with them generations of winemaking knowledge and a few treasured vines to Hawke’s Bay.

Mission Wines was born.

The Marist Fathers’ seminary is set among these vines.

Living amid the remains of these vines, and others that were meticulously researched and planted, is it any wonder I have learned a good deal about myself (and others!) from the vineyard, as the Israelites did of old?

The vine is a vigorous plant and needs severe pruning. It produces an abundance of leaves, but only some of its branches bear fruit.

The branches that produce only leaves must be cut back. Otherwise, they rob the others of their life-giving sap.

Leaves are the plant thinking of itself. Fruit is the plant thinking beyond itself, to the next generation.

The most vigorous, luxuriant part of myself may well be the part most in need of pruning.

Liberty Island and Ellis Island lie at the entrance to New York City.

On Liberty Island stands the iconic Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island has its own statue, not as tall perhaps, but equally iconic. It is of Annie Moore.

Although the two islands are separated by a stretch of water, they are united by words from a poem. Engraved on a bronze plaque inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty are these lines:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

They come from “The New Colossus”, an 1883 sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus.

Though the words are engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, they belong equally to Ellis Island and its statue.

Ellis Island was once the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. On New Year’s Day 1892, a 17-year-old girl named Annie Moore stepped onto the island and into a new life in America.

She and her two younger brothers had just completed a 12-day journey across the Atlantic, beginning at Cobh in County Cork, Ireland. Annie is recognised as the first person to pass through Ellis Island’s immigration station.

Today, on our Roman Calendar, we are encouraged to pray for refugees and migrants. These are people who either choose to leave their place of birth (migrants) or are forced to (refugees), and who then seek a safe place to live.

As midterm elections approach in the US, President Donald Trump has highlighted 25 achievements, including halting refugee admissions.

Perhaps he and our senior Cabinet minister Shane Jones ought to visit Liberty Island together and read the sonnet written in bronze on the pedestal beneath the Statue of Liberty.

Mr Jones has described mass immigration from India as a “butter chicken tsunami”.

In late January 2025, during a debate in Parliament, he also yelled “send the Mexicans home” across the debating chamber. The remark was directed at Green Party MP Ricardo Menéndez March, who was born in Mexico.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD), a prominent far-right party, combines strict nationalism with an anti-immigration platform. Perhaps its members, too, might do well to visit the Statue of Liberty.

We always begin Mass with what is known as the Penitential Rite. In this rite, we ask forgiveness for our sins.

As we do so, we should ask for the grace to forgive those who have sinned against us.

Today’s Gospel (Mt 18:21–35) has St Peter asking a question. The text reads: ‘Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?”‘ (18:21)

My first thought is: ‘If Peter needs to ask the question, he is not ready to forgive at all!’

A former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting a friend who had endured the same ordeal.

‘Have you forgiven the Nazis?’ he asked his friend.

‘Yes,’ came the reply.

‘Well, I haven’t. I am still consumed with hatred for them.’

‘In that case,’ said his friend gently, ‘they still have you in prison.’

In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela writes about his long years of imprisonment on Robben Island.

He recalls how, one day, he was called to the main office. Mandela had been chosen by the prisoners as their spokesperson.

General Steyn was visiting the island and wanted to know from Mandela whether the prisoners had any complaints.

Badenhorst, the officer in command of the prison, was also present. He was feared and hated by the prisoners.

In a calm, forceful and truthful manner, Mandela informed the visitor of the prisoners’ chief complaints, doing so without bitterness or recrimination.

The general duly noted what Mandela had to say, which amounted to a damning indictment of Badenhorst’s regime.

The following day, Badenhorst approached Mandela and said, “I am leaving the island. I just want to wish you people good luck.”

The remark left Mandela dumbfounded, and he thought about the incident for a long time afterwards. Badenhorst had perhaps been the most callous and barbaric commanding officer they had had on the island.

Yet the incident showed there was another side to his nature. As Mandela concludes: “It goes to show that even the most seemingly cold-blooded have a core of decency, and that if their hearts are touched, they are capable of changing.”

Reflecting on these words, and considering today’s Gospel from St Matthew (18:15–20) — which, in my Bible, follows the heading “Reproving Another Who Sins” — I am left thinking: it may not be so much what you say, but the way in which you say it, that matters.