Metropolitan
Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk
The Lord spake this parable: “There was a certain
householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a
winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into
a far country: and when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants
to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen
took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again,
he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.
But last of all he sent them his son, saying, ‘They will reverence my son.’ But
when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir;
come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.’ And they caught
him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. When the lord therefore of
the vineyard cometh, which will he do unto those husbandmen?” They say unto
Him, “He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard
unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their season.”
Jesus saith unto them, “Did ye never read in the Scriptures, ‘The Stone which
the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the
Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’?” (St. Matthew 21:23-42).
