SCRIPTURE READINGS
Twenty-seventh Sunday, October 4, 2026

Biblical Readings Online Here 
(Year A in the three-year cycle of readings) 

A memorable line in the Song of Songs is the phrase “love is strong as death” (8:6) meaning that the love of a man and woman is a tremendous force affecting all aspects of our lives. When another reciprocates love, it is a beautiful thing. In the Bible, Jacob’s love for Rachel was so strong that waiting seven years to marry her “seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her (Genesis 29:20). Love betrayed, however, leads to utterly different results, as the daily newspapers remind us.

Isaiah and Matthew’s Gospel show us what happens when divine love is rejected and betrayed. But instead of the violence and revenge we might expect, something different happens.

Isaiah sings of his friend’s vineyard. The vineyard symbolizes the beloved. The lover (the Lord) looks at his beloved (Israel) expecting she will return his love, symbolized as delicious grapes. Instead, the yield is inedible wild grapes.

The Lord reacts with outrage: “What more was there to do for my vineyard?” And then the punishment: “I will take away its hedge, give it to grazing. . . Yes, I will make it a ruin. . . “For [my friend] looked for judgment, but see bloodshed! For justice, but hark, the outcry!”

No more love words, for the Lord is angry and will act. Can the people who do not respond have any hope for a change, or must they simply brace themselves for punishment? Can a song that started out so beautifully end so bleakly?

Matthew’s story, though containing more violence than Isaiah, offers a fresh start. The vineyard will be taken away from the tenants, the religious leaders of the people and given to others: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

If we could turn the story in Matthew into a prayer, it would run something like this: «Yours, O God, is the vineyard and its harvest, yours the kingdom of justice and peace. You call your people to tend its growth. Bless the work entrusted to our hand, that we may offer you an abundance of just works, a rich harvest or peace.»

Richard Clifford, S.J., has taught biblical studies for 55 years, most recently at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College, and has written many scholarly and popular books and articles.