Crushed Like Grapes

“Crushed Like Grapes”
A reflection on Mark 12:1-12
Monday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
©️2023 by Gloria M. Chang

The Parable of the Tenants

He began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and left on a journey. At the proper time he sent a servant to the tenants to obtain from them some of the produce of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent them another servant. And that one they beat over the head and treated shamefully. He sent yet another whom they killed. So, too, many others; some they beat, others they killed. He had one other to send, a beloved son. He sent him to them last of all, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come, put the tenants to death, and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture passage:

‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;

by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes’?”

They were seeking to arrest him, but they feared the crowd, for they realized that he had addressed the parable to them. So they left him and went away.

Mark 12:1-12

Crushed For Our Iniquities

St. Michael the Archangel Parish, Findlay, Ohio
Eucharistic stained glass window depicting bread and wine surrounded by a frame of grapes and ears of grain
CC BY-SA 3.0

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:5 (ESV)

On grapes, the Lord hired farmers to tread.
But his Son they crushed into wine and bread.

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