[00:00] In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, today's gospel is a reminder to us to never allow our hearts to become hardened, but that our hearts may be always open to God's will, His divine providence, and God's divine light in our life. In the parable that Jesus speaks to us of, He uses a parable to reflect the hardness

[00:35] of hearts of the chief priests and scribes and elders in their rejection of God's divine plan, especially in His Son, Jesus Christ. A man who planted the vineyard is God, the vineyard is Israel, the tenant farmers He entrusted to are the chief priests and the scribes, and the servants He sends to obtain produce are the prophets of Israel, the prophets who were beaten, imprisoned, and some killed.

[01:13] And lastly, the son who is sent is Jesus, who they reject and kill. And ultimately, Jesus is revealing, because of their hardness of heart, that a new covenant will be established in which God's divine plan will no longer be entrusted to them, but to a new Church, which He will found. The stone has, and of course the building, the cornerstone is Jesus Christ, that we want

[01:45] always Christ to be the center of our lives, because without Christ, we are nothing. Without Him, our life has no meaning. It is all the meaning and purpose of our life is our union with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Today we honor St. Justin the Martyr. St. Justin died about the year 165. He was a pagan, he was a philosopher, but he was seeking the truth. He went and studied many philosophers, ancient philosophers, and studied Plato, and one day

[02:23] he was in a very isolated area, he liked to go to isolated places to walk and reflect and to think, along a seashore, and he noticed that behind him there was a very elderly man, and he turned around and asked the man what he was doing, because he was surprised to see somebody out there in such an isolated place, and the man said he was searching for his servants, and then he asked Justin what he was doing, and he was saying that he was

[02:57] trying to reflect and understand, he had a desire to know God and to see God, and the man said that through divine, through human reason, we can come to know God's existence, but it takes divine revelation to know who God is, and then he began to reveal to him the scriptures of the Old Testament and of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and after this, Justin knew he had found what he'd been looking for, and would eventually go to be baptized and

[03:31] become a Christian. He never saw that man again, the man disappeared, and he writes about this in one of his books, his encounter with this man, he never saw the man again, but this man definitely led him to understand that truth is founded in Jesus Christ, and Justin went on to convert many people in various regions of that time, including in Egypt and in Greece, and eventually he would

[04:03] go to Rome, and it was there that he was arrested with his disciples, his followers, his students, and he was charged to offer worship to the Roman idols, the Roman pagan gods, and he refused, and his disciples refused, and they said that one would not, when discovering the truth and who God is, one would not bow down to pagan idols, to idols that are not the true God, and for

[04:38] this he was beheaded with his disciples. We can ask St. Justin the Martyr today for the same courage and faith in his desire to long to know and to see God, and that desire for truth, and that we may continue to open our hearts to God's Spirit, to allow God to penetrate our hearts and lead us ever closer to Him, and just finally today, of course, is the first of June, and we begin the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so beautifully are the, where our Sacred Heart

[05:14] statue has been adorned, just reminding us this month is dedicated to the Sacred Heart, and that we want to keep our hearts always united and faithful to the heart of Jesus. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.