March 29, 2009 – Chicago, IL

The troupe and I performed two shows today in Chicago, after performing three shows in two days in South Bend, Indiana, at Holy Cross College, just across the street from the now infamous Notre Dame.

And the issue at Notre Dame can best be explained by the parable Jesus told of the vineyard and the wicked caretakers.  The lord of the vineyard rents his property out to husbandmen, whose job is to care for his fields and to “render him the fruits in their seasons.”  But when the lord sends servants to the husbandmen to receive the fruit of his vineyards, “they beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.” The lord finally sends them his son, saying, “They will reverence my son.”  But the husbandmen say, “This is the heir!  Come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.”

Is this not at the core of all serious sin, – pushing God out of the picture, casting Him out of the vineyard, as the wicked caretakers do, and killing Him – all this to try to take His place, to make ourselves God – to “seize on His inheritance”?

The irony is this – though men have been trying from the start to remake Jesus in our own image, to soften His message, to deny His divinity or His humanity, to cast Him out of the vineyard and kill Him, to take the son’s inheritance and make it our own – though we’ve been doing this for years, as the administration of Notre Dame and most of their graduating class still are trying to do – the irony remains that His inheritance is ours if we simply follow Him with faith.  As St. Paul says, “We are children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.”  We are trying to steal the kingdom, when it has been given to us as a gift.

When the wicked tenants killed the son, they lost His inheritance, but made it our own.  When the administration of Notre Dame give glory and praise to the High Priest of the Culture of Death, they merely confirm the suffering of this same son and the folly of men who make themselves God.