March 3, 2026

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43

The other day I ran across this version of the famous Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the ones I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies where nobody will ever find them. For the record, especially since this is a homily, let me state for the record that this statement has multiple problems with Church teaching and, if you don't know what they are, see me after Mass. But the Serenity Prayer, in its normal version, is one that we all struggle with every day. Knowing what we can change and what we can't is difficult, and moreover not just knowing but accepting this, can be difficult for many of us. Our readings today help us to examine this.

In the first reading, we have one of these types of situations. We are told that the grapes in this vineyard are wild grapes. Now I'm no wine expert, but I'm told that wild grapes will never produce wine, ever. It would be like planting broccoli and wanting to make tomato sauce with it. It is never going to happen. So Isaiah doesn't speak of tending to the grapes more – he tells us that the plants aren't good for anything. Compare this with the situation in the Gospel. Jesus implies that there is a good harvest to be had from his work in establishing the vineyard. The problem is not the grapes, but in the people tending the grapes. While this parable is primarily an allegory about Israel and how they rejected the prophets and ultimately Jesus himself, it is on a secondary level a parable of hope. At the end, Jesus tells us that he will give it to people who “will produce its fruit” [Matthew 21:43]. This situation is not hopeless – it can be resolved. In reality, Jesus is telling us, his disciples, that we are the solution, we are to reap the harvest that he has given us.

But here's the problem that we all know: deciding what can and can't be solved is difficult. This is why the Serenity Prayer always hits home when we hear it. Especially when we deal with people, we want to hope that they can change, that redemption is possible. And it is possible: there are many instances of people who have overcome addictions, of marriages that went from being in trouble to becoming happy, of students who struggled in school until they figured out what they were good at and then flowering. It is possible, but it is also so frustratingly infrequent. For every success story there are many more of people that have given up, that can't seem to find a way out of their problems. So how can we possibly know which is which? Some of us are optimists, and spend too much physical and emotional energy on something that will never happen, and others of us are pessimists, giving up while there is still legitimate hope. Here is where I think that Saint Paul's pep talk to the Philippians in the second reading is helpful.

His main suggestion, and what experts tell us is most helpful, is at the beginning of the reading. He said: “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God” [Philippians 4:6 NABRE]. It is through prayer that we find a way to cut through the knot that we can't seem to unravel. And specifically it is the prayer of petition and the prayer of thanksgiving that will do it. First, let's look at petition.

We petition God for many things, both individually as well as the whole Church at every Mass in our Prayers of the Faithful. We do this because Jesus specifically asked us to do this, to ask things of the Father, and Paul specifically enjoins us to do so as well, in today's reading as well as several other of his letters [e.g., 1 Timothy 2:1, Ephesians 6:18]. But Saint Paul also told us, in his first letter to the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things” [13:11]. How many people still pray like a child who has not studied for a test, and asks God to miraculously give them the correct answers so they can pass? We pray for miraculous solutions, and we can and should, but we must not stop there. We must pray for the strength to deal with the situation, the wisdom to prevent similar situations in the future, and an understanding of God's love and his will working in our lives. In my experience, God can and does miraculously intervene in the world, but his way is such that it doesn't happen often. However, he never fails to come to our aid in comforting us with his love if we ask him to do so.

The second prayer that Paul enjoins on us is the prayer of thanksgiving. Now Paul was a tent maker by vocation and also studied Jewish law under a renowned rabbi. He was not a trained psychologist; and they didn't have psychologists back then anyway. We believe that he was led by the Holy Spirit when writing his letters, the reason that they were saved and the Church Fathers added them to the New Testament canon. Arthur Brooks, a psychology professor at Harvard, studies these ideas, and shares this: “The single best way to grasp the reality of good things in life and turn down the noise that makes real threats hard to distinguish from petty ones is to occupy some of the negative emotion receptors with a different, positive feeling. The most effective of these positive feelings is gratitude. Many people see gratitude as something that happens to them because of their circumstances, which can make it feel out of reach in bad times. That’s the wrong way to approach it. Gratitude isn’t a feeling that materializes in response to your circumstances. It is a life practice. And even if you feel that you have little to be grateful for right now, you can – and should – engage in it” [Build the Life You Want, Portfolio/Penguin, 2023, p. 53]. Dr. Brooks and other researchers have consistently shown that those people who are the most thankful for what they have are also the happiest people. Dr. Brooks, a Catholic convert, a person who goes to Mass daily, has stated to Fr. Mike Schmitz that the Catholic Church has the answers to problems in life, because our God has revealed the necessary ingredients, if only we work on it. He knows that it is difficult, terribly difficult, but we can have the confidence when we pray that we know we are on the right path to get there eventually. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO36r3D5zpc ] It is still a leap of faith, that God will help us figure out how to solve a problem or how to live with it, but it is easier to make that leap of faith when we know that God has told us that it will work. This is why Saint Paul told the Philippians in a verse just before where our reading today started, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!” [Philippians 4:4]. Saint Paul knows that we must do it, even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard. We do it for the glory of God, yes, but we also do it for ourselves.

As we continue with the Liturgy of the Eucharist, may it give us the grace of wisdom to deal with life's problems. May the Serenity Prayer be always a sincere prayer for wisdom and acceptance of all our situations in life. We may not always know what to do in a particular situation, but we know that we Christians have been given a roadmap to solving it: prayer of petition, prayer of thanksgiving, prayer where we rejoice because our loving God.