March 19, 2010 – Isaiah 5

Happy Solemnity of St. Joseph

The first part of this about the vineyard makes me think about our country. Obviously I can’t comment on what is was or is like to live in other countries because I have been born and raised here. But when God talks about building a great vineyard and giving it everything that it needs, it sounds like the way our country started. We had a revolution based on freedom and equality and won the right to live as free people. But it just seems that we have taken our freedom and the gifts God has given us for granted and made it into something ugly. Now we see freedom as the ability to do whatever we want or makes us feel good. And I am not just talking about sex or drugs, but it is much broader than that. Government leaders, those in charge of businesses and banks, sports stars are examples in the public eye, but everyday people who bought mortgages they should not have or are in incredible credit card dept, we are all taking freedom for granted. We had all the foundation to make God’s vineyard on that showed the world that freedom was a beautiful thing lead the world towards a place where everyone should be free. What we are showing the world is that when you give people freedom they will take advantage of it and run amuck.

Everything swings on a pendulum. We had freedom and less government regulations and it went south and we are all suffering for our greed. Now it seems like people believe giving government more control is the answer because the individual does not know how to control themselves. If that happens there will be another swing when we get tired of too much government. Look at the mess we have made of our vineyard. It does appear that god has torn down our hedge rows and is allowing outside forces to come in and “giving up” is not the right term, but letting us grow wild or getting ready to plow us under and start anew. Let us pray for God’s patience so that we have a little bit more time to try and produce some good fruit from our vineyard before it is too late.