Guild of St. Peter ad Vincula

The Guild of St. Peter ad Vincula

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to my early school days.  One memory I have, and I’m sure most of you will share it, is of that sudden thud of fear when our teacher would announce a dreaded “spot quiz.”  We were supposed to have read something for homework the night before, or maybe we had to memorize some list of obscure facts, but no one had ever told us we were going to be tested.  And now, here we are, putting our books away as one of the other students dutifully passes out the papers for us to scribble out the slim contents of our regrettably empty brains.  And trust me, the nuns had acquired a long and imaginative list of punishments for those who failed.

At that age, we had very little appreciation for the excellence of the education these nuns were giving us.  All we knew was that we had better do what we were told and not step out of line, or else!  And of course, we gradually learned by experience, always, always, to be prepared for that dreaded spot quiz!  The concept of surprising people with an unexpected test was not invented by the nuns, however.  They merely followed the modus operandi of God himself.  Let’s not forget the ultimate lesson of why we should  never be caught unprepared.  It’s imperative that we must never experience the horror of an unprepared death, where we meet with a sudden accident or are struck dead with some awful medical trauma while we’re in the state of mortal sin.  Nothing could ever be worse than such a terrible thing, truly a fate worse than death.  And those little spot quizzes taught us that lesson.  They instilled in our head the concept that things actually do happen that we don’t expect, and for which we’re not prepared.

So it should come as no surprise to you, then, that today, the Church is giving us a spot quiz.  I hope you’re experiencing a mild shiver of anxiety when I say that, for all the reasons I just gave.  So take out your imaginary papers and get ready to answer a question that I’m going to ask on behalf of your conscience.  We’re about to find out whether or not we did our homework that our Lord gave us last week.  I’ll pause a second while you ponder on that.  Let’s see if you can even remember what the homework was, let alone whether you did it or not.  And as you do your pondering, I hope that your anxiety about the quiz is spilling over into the more serious fear that maybe you promptly forgot what our Lord’s lesson was last week…

Permit me to remind you, and then we’ll start the test.  Our Lord told a parable about labourers who were sent at different times of the day to go and work in the vineyard.  Some started early in the morning, others at midday, some even at the eleventh hour.  But they all worked!  “Ite et vos,” said our Lord. “Go ye also.”  “Go ye also, and get to work in my vineyard.”   Whatever time it is, I don’t care, he says.  Start work now and you’ll have the same reward as those who labored all the day long.  That was last Sunday.  Seven days ago.  What have we done since then?  Did we start work?  Did we turn our lives around and begin in earnest to do whatever is necessary to save our souls?

So here we are, a whole week later, and it’s time for a spot quiz.  The Church provides it by juxtaposing today’s Gospel of Sexagesima with last week’s command by Christ to start work.  Our diligent and caring Holy Mother Church reminds us to think very carefully whether last week’s lesson made enough of an impression on us that we actually obeyed our Lord’s command.  She gives us, like the good teacher she is, a spot quiz.  It’s multiple choice and the one and only question is this: 

Did our Lord’s command to get to work
a) fall by the wayside?
b) fall upon a rock?
c) fall among thorns?  or
d) fall on good ground? 

So scribble down on that imaginary test paper in your head exactly how you did, these past seven days.  How did you measure up?  Which of these four choices most closely resemble your reaction to our Lord’s command to start work. 

We don’t have to wonder what these four things mean—our Lord himself explains this parable in detail. 

Let’s start with the first choice.  Did our Lord’s command fall by the wayside?  “Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.”  Were we paying attention to our Lord’s command last week, and to the sermon that tried to instill his command into our head?  Did we hear last week’s lesson and then promptly forget about it the minute Mass was over?  Did the devil manage to drive the word out of our hearts, out of our minds, so that we just went back to our old ways, blithely indifferent to our Lord’s command to start doing his work, no matter how late it might be to start?  Or did we just not care?  Because we don’t just “forget” these words of Jesus.  It is truly the devil who drives them out of our mind so that we might lose our salvation.  Have we fallen into the devil’s trap so easily?  Is our salvation now in peril?  It’s still not too late!  But this may be the eleventh hour, it may be the last chance we get!

Maybe we fell into the second category, choice b) and our Lord’s words fell on a rock…  “They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.”  How many of us heard the lesson last week and resolved to do better, only to fall victim to the first temptation the devil sent our way—anger, lust, gluttony?  It doesn’t matter which, the result was the same—our shallow resolution to work in God’s vineyard was so easily shattered, we lost our state of grace and with it our good intentions.  Is this what happened to us this past week?  Are we so shallow?  If we did fall on the rock of temptation, we have the Sacrament of Penance.  Let’s make use of it and this time, let our firm purpose of amendment be truly firm!

Then there’s choice c)… Is this what happened to us?  “That which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.”  This covers a lot of us, I’m sure.  We’re so bent on getting through life from day to day, bouncing from one care to another, emotional wrecks who are so easily distracted by the petty troubles of life, or by the constant rat race for riches and pleasure.  Everything is about me, how I can avoid pain, suffering, even inconvenience; it’s about my need for material riches and greater physical pleasure and entertainment.  And so we relegate poor God to a place of secondary rank or even lower.  Beware—these thorns of life will choke us.  If the seed of God’s word fell on these material worries and distractions, then we must change our approach to life.  We need to become absolutely determined to make God the supreme Being in our life that he truly is, and focus on doing his will from now on, and not our own.

How many of us can pat ourselves on the back and pass our little spot quiz by answering with option d)?  “That on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”  This is the only option that will get us a passing grade and allow us to graduate out of this life summa cum laude.  Last week’s lesson was clear.  It was not just a mild encouragement to do better.  It was a command to do better, to start work now, and make up for having stood idle in the marketplace all the day long.  We must pray, we must pray hard, and we must pray hard now.  This week’s lesson is even clearer—that we’ve probably failed to learn last week’s lesson, so let’s wake up and get started now, so we can pass the next spot quiz without any more excuses.