Bishop Robert Barron publishes daily reflections on the Bible. Click right here if you'd like to check out the latest, or if you'd like to subscribe (it's free). Below, find Bishop Barron's reflection on Matthew 21:33–43, 45–46 (emphasis added):
Friends, just before his passion and death, Jesus tells this striking story of the landowner who planted a vineyard. The fertile vineyard stands for Israel, his chosen people. But it could be broadened out to include the world. What do we learn from this beautiful image? That God has made for his people a place where they can find rest, enjoyment, and good work.
We—Israel, the Church, the world—are not the owners of this vineyard; we are tenants. One of the most fundamental spiritual mistakes we can make is to think that we own the world. We are tenants, entrusted with the responsibility of caring for it, but everything that we have and are is on loan. Our lives are not about us.
You don't have to be formally "religious" to understand what I call the "Two Worlds Hypothesis," which is the name I have given to my understanding that we all live in two quite different "Worlds," simultaneously. Click that link for an early expression of my thinking, from 2014.
Most, immediately, we live in a "Human World" that we, ourselves, design and build. Take a look out your window to the city streets - or, turn on your television. We shape and design the world that we most immediately see, and inhabit. That's "our" world.
In fact, though, the world in which we most "immediately" live (a world I often call the "Political World") is not the world upon which we "ultimately" depend. The "World of Nature," which can also be called the "World That God Made," at least by those who are not averse to utilizing some "religious" terminology, will either support our human civilization - or it won't. It's up to us to be smart enough to realize that we do, in fact, depend on Planet Earth, and the natural systems of Planet Earth, and that we are ultimately dependent on those natural systems, which will either support us, or not.
As Bishop Barron is hoping to make us see, we are "tenants" in the vineyard, not owners.
Let's pay attention to the basic requirements of the lease. Our "lease on life" depends on being smart enough to do that! If you don't know what I am talking about, do an internet search for "Global Warming."
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