NOTES for Мф 21:33-42
Is this parable only about the killing of the prophets and of the Son of God Himself? Is there not a direct rebuke to our conscience here? Yes, of course, because everything written in the Gospel is addressed to me personally. So what is my guilt?
Remember some occasion when you received the Holy Mysteries of Christ and it was especially full of grace. Remember how your heart opened wide to receive God and every person, every single one: relatives and loved ones, those who had offended you, and even the poor on the church steps. How you wanted to kiss everyone and say a warm, gentle word. How you returned from church and looked at the world with different eyes, as if you had fallen in love and learned that your feeling was returned. Has that ever happened?
At such moments it appears to us, oh, how kind I have become, how I love everyone... But in reality, it is simply that the Lord has sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, into your heart through Communion in the Holy Mysteries of Christ.
And what happens next? A day passes, then another; cares, problems, and other things pile up, and little by little we begin to grow irritated. The same people whom we loved so much are already saying unbearable foolish things; the impudence of the poor somehow becomes especially unpleasant; and thoughts come: after all, why does he or she not work?! And so on, and on, and on. So we have killed the Son of God within ourselves.