We have been given so many gifts and blessings by our Heavenly Father. Yet, in our fallen state it is all too easy to take them for granted. Our readings today teach us that we must live with an intentional awareness of our many blessings and use them gratefully to glorify God.
 
In our Gospel passage from Matthew, Jesus uses the image of a vineyard to teach the importance of using our blessings well. He tells the story of a landowner who plants a vineyard and leases it to tenants before he goes on a journey. Instead of tending the vineyard, the tenants mistreat the servants in the vineyard and even the son of the landowner, whom they kill. When the
landowner realizes what the tenants have done, he puts them to death and leases his vineyard to tenants who “will give him the produce at the proper times.”
 
By Baptism, we have received the gift of salvation and membership in Kingdom of God — we are now “tenants” called to work in the “vineyard” and produce fruit for its owner, our Heavenly Father. Jesus makes it clear that we if we squander the gift of salvation, we will lose it. It is a sobering truth.
 
So, let us use our intellect to think on these gifts throughout the day and resolve to use all our gifts for God’s glory.
 

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Therefore, I say to you,
the kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people that will produce its fruit. (Matthew 21:43)