Daily Gospel Reflection
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June 1, 2026
Jesus began to speak to the chief priests, the scribes,
and the elders 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.
Excerpts from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner. The full readings of the day from the Lectionary are available here.
My toddler, Maeve, has recently developed a love of puzzles. As a somewhat-frequent jigsaw puzzler myself, I now balance the role of coach and teammate when we craft a puzzle together, wanting her to problem-solve while also teaching a few tips. The first tip being find the corner pieces. These anchors, the guides, connect the border, then the complete picture.
If I were in the crowd listening to Jesus’ words today, I imagine the widened eyes and knowing glances as Jesus lays out this parable to the very people seeking to arrest him. Jesus uses this parable and speaks the words of the Old Testament to describe himself. The stone that the builders rejected, the sacrificial lamb, has become the cornerstone—the most important piece, the foundation upon which our church is built.
The man’s son, the last sent to the farmers, surely to be met with respect and reverence, is instead killed. The patient, loving, and gracious God so often described reaches a point of judgment and consequence, killing the tenants and giving the vineyard to others. But the story does not end there; death does not have the final word. In our faith, it never does.
Similar to my puzzle-making with Maeve, the gospel today brings our attention to the cornerstone, the living stone, of Jesus. There is a steadiness that only Jesus provides to our faith, a trust and companionship of the human experience. This cornerstone, this corner piece, allows the rest of the puzzle to come into focus and completion.
Prayer
Almighty Father, giver of all that is good, hear us as we turn to you in prayer. Help us not to be like the tenants of the vineyard whose hearts and minds were full of jealousy and selfish desires. Help us this day to have our minds and hearts filled with the fruits your Holy Spirit so that we, working with your Son, might bring about a fitting harvest. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Justin the Martyr, one of the most famous of the early Church martyrs, is remembered both for his steadfast faith in the face of death and because he was one of the first thinkers to reconcile the faith with reason.
Justin lived and died in the first part of the second century (about AD 90 - AD 165) and is known as the first Christian apologist. (In Greek, the word “apology” means “to defend with speech.”)
His parents were nonbelievers, and they provided the best education of the time to Justin—he thrived in rhetoric, poetry, and history, and later studied philosophy. He spent several years seeking knowledge of God and found several teachers who eventually disappointed him. One day, he struck up a conversation with an older man who introduced him to Christianity. Justin inquired further and began to learn the faith.
Even before this encounter, however, the example of Christian martyrs had aroused his curiosity. “Even at the time when I was content with the doctrines of Plato,” he wrote, “when I heard Christians accused and saw them fearlessly meet death and all that is considered terrible, I felt that such people could not possibly have been leading the life of vicious pleasure with which they were credited.” When he was about 30 years old, he fully embraced the faith and became a Christian.
This was very early in the Church’s history, and few non-Christians knew or understood anything about the faith. Early martyrs were mostly uneducated and died without being able to fully defend their beliefs. Justin, who spent his life in dialogue with seekers of truth, thought that many others would accept Christianity if they had a reasonable explanation of it. He began to write and speak about the Christian faith to other philosophers.
Christian rituals were the source of much gossip because they were thought to be secretive. Justin explained these rites and other aspects of the faith to the people of the Roman Empire, who condemned Christians because they feared they would undermine the nation with their licentiousness and disloyalty. Justin countered that Christians, in fact, were peaceable people concerned for the common good and the rule of law—in fact, he argued, Christians made better Roman citizens.
He made several trips to Rome, where he engaged pagan thinkers in public debate—besting them and revealing their ignorance. In the end, his work was considered a threat to the empire’s cultural religion, and he was arrested and ordered to sacrifice to the Roman gods. He refused and was beheaded with six other Christians (five men and one woman).
The account of his trial and martyrdom remains a valuable artifact in Christian tradition and is considered very reliable. What follows is part of the proceedings recorded when Justin and his companions were brought before the Roman prefect, Rusticus.
Rusticus: Listen, you who are so eloquent and who believes that he has the truth—if I have you beaten and beheaded, do you believe that you will then go up to heaven?
Justin: If I suffer as you say, I hope to receive the reward of those who keep Christ’s commandments. I know that all who do that will remain in God’s grace even to the consummation of all things.
Rusticus: So you think you will go up to heaven, there to receive a reward?
Justin: I don’t think it, I know it. I have no doubt about it whatsoever.
Rusticus: Very well. Come here and sacrifice to the gods.
Justin: No one in their right mind gives up truth for falsehood.
Rusticus: If you don’t do as I tell you, you will be tortured without mercy.
Justin: We ask nothing better than to suffer for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ and so to be saved. If we do this we can stand confidently and quietly before the fearful judgment seat of that same God and savior, when in accordance with divine ordering all this world will pass away.
And so he was killed. Relics of St. Justin Martyr rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica.
St. Justin the Martyr, you were one of the first thinkers to rationally defend the faith that you gave your life for—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Justin Martyr is in the public domain. Last accessed March 18, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
