Readings:
Isaiah 5
Proverbs 3
John 19:17-42
Isaiah 5
Isaiah tells a parable of a vineyard that isn’t producing the desired fruit, and is in fact producing wild grapes that can be harvested in the wild without benefit of vineyard, or workers or even any effort other than to pluck them. This is meant to show that despite the efforts and favor God has shown to the people and the city of Jerusalem, they’re producing fruit no better than what was there before God set his seal on a chosen people and chosen city.
The implication of this being that the destruction of the vineyard and the trampling of the vines will be of no great loss to God or even to the world as a while because the vines that will grow fallow on the land will produce the wild grapes without any help.
This parable and it’s impending doom that is prophecied along with it, is the context for Jesus’ parables about vineyards and vineyard workers. The Jews of his day would’ve understood it well, and his apostles would’ve been told the deeper meaning in private like Jesus usually did, but the unbelieving Jews that heard this parable of our Lord would no doubt link it back to Isaiah 5 in their minds after the events of AD 70, assuming they survived those events. Just as the vineyard in our reading today is doomed to be trampled by a foreign army (the Babylonians in 587 BC) the vineyard that Jesus spoke of was the second temple and the city which were both destroyed in AD 70.
John 19:17-42
Jesus is taken from the praetorium and led off to be crucified, and John makes note that he is carrying his own means of execution. This is a callback to Isaac carrying the wood for the sacrifice up the hill with Abraham (see The Story of Salvation; Abraham and Isaac ). The hills of Jerusalem are the same hills where this almost sacrifice of Isaac took place, and now here is Abraham’s descendant who is carrying his own wood, and is the sacrifice that he promised that God would provide, and also the same descendant through whom the world would be blessed.
The soldiers divide Jesus’ meager belongings, but the seamless tunic was too valuable to be torn to pieces for each to take a share, so they cast lots to see who’d get a piece. (See Question: What Is The Significance Of Jesus’ Seamless Garment?)
they divide my garments among them,and for my clothing they cast lots.
Psalms 22:18
This fulfilled the prophecy in psalms 22, the same psalm that Jesus will later quote in his words from the cross. (See The Seven Last Words of Christ)
Two secret followers of Jesus, both high ranking members of the Sanhedrin, take his body and anoint it and lay him in the tomb. the catechism makes specific reference to these to followers when it points out the divisions that existed among the temple authorities as to what should be done with Jesus and his followers.
Among the religious authorities of Jerusalem, not only were the Pharisee Nicodemus and the prominent Joseph of Arimathea both secret disciples of Jesus, but there was also long-standing dissension about him, so much so that St. John says of these authorities on the very eve of Christ’s Passion, “many.. . believed in him”, though very imperfectly. This is not surprising, if one recalls that on the day after Pentecost “a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith” and “some believers. . . belonged to the party of the Pharisees”, to the point that St. James could tell St. Paul, “How many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed; and they are all zealous for the Law.”
CCC 595
(See Jewish Guilt For The Death Of Christ for a longer treatment on this subject and how the catechism condemns any effort to lay the blame at the feet of Jews alone)
Now That I'm Catholic 