Today= s Mass and its text are focused on one word, the vineyard. But it= s not just the word. The prophet Isaiah raised up in his community, looks at the community, and begins to recite this rather beautiful and powerful poem in which he acknowledges that God has indeed lavished his care upon his people. Just like an agriculturalist takes care of his vines, digs around them, weeds them, makes sure the soil is good, makes sure everything is pruned and then even places a wall to protect it. God has done that and much more so much that the prophet says: A What more could I have done for my vineyard?@ Of course the agriculturalist expects good grapes at the end of the season. When he reaches out for that at harvest time he finds wild grapes. The prophet then says the community then needs to be careful because the Lord will remove the wall, leave it unprotected and it will become a place of desert.

Then we heard another person who stands up in the community, the psalmist. He looks at the situation and he sees the devastation of the community and what does he do? He cries out to the Lord of the vineyard and says: A Why did you do this?@ A Why did you take down the wall and expose us to anybodies grabbing any thing from us and also the wild beasts? Please restore the vine and the vineyard.@ So he cries out and out of that cry of the Jewish community came the gift of the Messiah. Now Jesus stands in the community and he too looks at it and says: A It is like a vineyard.@ Now the vineyard has changed. The leadership thinks it owns the vineyard and therefore it kills anyone the Lord sends to ask for its produce, including God= s own Son.

But then the Lord says something rather striking. Have you never read the text that the stone rejected by the builders will become the cornerstone. All of a sudden the parable has become the proclamation of the gospel. Jesus is saying my passion and death will bring about a whole new Israel, a whole new people and it will be founded on the cross. And in the power of the Spirit the Resurrection will continue through history.

God has decided that with the passion and death of Christ to found the community upon that great mystery, which we celebrate around this altar, and out of that mystery the Lord builds his people and he= s been doing it ever since.

So today we= re celebrating the fruitfulness of someone on the vine. Someone who walked in a community of faith, who not only participated in its practices, and therefore went to Mass as a young man, but became a priest and in the power of his priesthood he bore a tremendous amount of fruit. It must have made God very happy because that= s exactly what God= s plan is about. To make us fruitful.

Now I don= t read Slovak, which I= m sorry to say I don= t, I wish I did but Dr. Hrobak wrote an article on the 100^th Anniversary of Stephen Furdek= s life and then he put it in a pamphlet and already after 100 years it= s true that Steve= s efforts were fruitful. I think some of the things that he says are probably more true today. But the founding of the organizations just that alone that is the First Catholic Slovak Union and then the First Catholic Slovak Ladies Union, then the Slovenska Matica, and the American and Slovak League are all here today because of one man= s efforts but not by himself. Then the blossom of it, the amount of parishes that were built because of his effort and the efforts of the organizations and the amount of good that was done over those years is unbelievable. So God intends us to be fruitful and his life is one such fruitfulness. Now Dr. Hrobak did not explain too much about his interior life except he said some very interesting things. He said his model was A Za Boha a Narod@ , A For God and my people.@ There= s probably a better way of translating at least that= s seems to be what I picked up from the article.

If you read the Lives of Saints, as we do here in the monastery, you see one of the characteristics of all the saints is they= re single minded. They are on the track for the Lord and nothing deviates them from it. And that was the model of Fr. Furdek. A Za Boha a Narod@ and it shows in all that he did. His deep principles, his capacity to be a person who stood in the midst of conflict and listened, and then came up with a reconciling solution in a number of situations not only among Slovaks but others as well. That means he had the capacity to bring people together in community. Which is another characteristic of the saints. They enrich the community not just this or that person. The sad part is we don= t know interiorly how much of this was a struggle for him. I= m sure it was because nobody grows in virtue by accident. The fact that he died so young and he had illnesses tells me that it must have been a struggle. But the real things that he teaches us is how important one person can be and you don= t have to have all the exterior powers that in his case were really circumstances to his advantage. Because at that time the immigrants were coming from Slovakia in great numbers and they had great needs. So he was able to touch the needs and right away because he began to fit the peoples needs and he got responses that were hopeful. Right now the Slovaks are in pretty good shape, they don= t need us so it= s harder for organizations to bring them together. I know you know what I= m saying. It doesn= t mean that there= s no needs out there. It just means that the needs they have are not exactly the same as they were before and we have to reach out to them.

Right now the most important need in the Church is holy people. We have been given witnesses. We have been given a past pope who was exemplary, and now you would think that with that pope everything is in place, right? No, he dies and all of a sudden the new pope is there and there= s whole new horizons, all kinds of things to do. It tells us that we stand in a big mystery. God is far from finished with the human race, that salvation is a work that God is doing more than we are and therefore we live as participators in something that= s a lot bigger than us. Which means we automatically walk humbly. But it also tells us that our planting of seeds is very important. We may not be doing things that impact the newspapers and make impressions on people but each of us is called to be a branch on the vine and it= s very important that we do what we are called to do. And each of us has been given the care of the Father of the vineyard so that we can become fruitful.

So the real issue is do we learn from Fr. Furdek that we must plant our seeds as he planted his seeds so that they begin to blossom and begin to make fruit and flourish in this generation of the church and even in to the next and the next. That= s the call of celebrating the saints. It= s not just to honor them and praise God and thank him for the gifts he gives us through them but it= s a call for us to really see the significance of our life. Every person is a unique gift of God to enhance, not ourselves, but the world. And it= s right where you are, doing right what you= re doing, out of love for God, so that you have your model, Za Boha a Narod.