13th Sunday of Matthew

August 30 is the leave-taking of the feast kept on August 29, when the Church remembers the death of the Forerunner in the fortress of Machaerus—a birthday banquet that ended with a prophet’s head carried in on a platter. The day is not a second telling of the story so much as a final bow before it: the hymns of the Beheading are sung once more, and then the Church lets the feast go.

The Forerunner’s death is the last of the murders the Gospel parable has in view. He is the servant sent for the fruit of the vineyard; Herod is the tenant who would rather kill the messenger than surrender the harvest. And Christ tells this parable in the last week of His own life, days before the tenants take the Son “and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.” The Baptist goes before Christ into the wilderness, into the Jordan, into Hades, and here into the pattern of rejection that the parable lays bare. The old liturgical instinct to place the Beheading and this Gospel side by side is not coincidence but catechesis.

The Dismissal appointed for the day names him explicitly—“the honorable, glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John, whose beheading we now commemorate.”

Alexander served as vicar to Metrophanes, the first bishop of Byzantium, and in his stead attended the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, where he stood with the Fathers against the blasphemy of Arius. Metrophanes, aged and failing, named him his successor by will, and Alexander took up the see of the imperial city at a moment when the city itself was still half pagan and the Church was still learning to speak the word homoousios without trembling.

His episcopate was a long contest on two fronts. Against the philosophers of the city he defended the faith with a simplicity that unsettled them; the tradition preserves the account of a pagan disputant silenced not by argument but by Alexander’s command in the name of Christ. Against the Arians he had no weapon at all except prayer—and the emperor’s court had grown favorable to them.

The most famous scene of his life is the one he least wanted. Ordered by the imperial party to receive Arius into communion, Alexander shut himself in the church and lay on the pavement before the altar through the night, begging God to take either himself or Arius from the world before the Church should be forced to that communion. The next morning, as Arius was being escorted in triumph toward the church, he turned aside to relieve himself and there died horribly. The Church has never read that death as a vindication of anyone’s cleverness. It read it as an answer to a bishop’s tears.

Alexander reposed in 340, at the age of ninety-eight. He had held the vineyard for another and returned it.

John was an ascetic before he was anything else, and the name the Church gave him—Nesteutes, the Faster—was earned long before he was made patriarch in 582. Elevation changed his address and not his habits. He kept the same sparse table, gave away what came to him, and turned the patriarchal residence into something closer to a hospice than a palace.

He is remembered for two things that sit oddly together. The first is the penitential canons that bear his name, a body of guidance for confessors marked by an unusual pastoral lenience—shorter penances, applied with attention to the person rather than the offense. The second is the title Ecumenical Patriarch, used in his synodal acts, which drew a sharp and famous protest from Pope St. Gregory the Great in Rome, who read in it a claim John does not appear to have intended.

When he died in 595, those who came to settle his estate found a wooden bed, a poor cloak, and a coarse garment. There was nothing else. A man who had governed the first see of the East for thirteen years had rendered the fruits in their seasons and kept none of them.

Paul was a Cypriot, raised to the patriarchal throne in 780 under the iconoclast emperor Leo IV, and required at his consecration to swear the oath against the holy icons that the iconoclast establishment demanded of every candidate. He swore it. He then spent four years unable to live with what he had done.

In 784, without warning, he left the patriarchal residence, entered the monastery of St. Florus, took the schema, and refused to return. When the Empress Irene came to him with the senate to ask why, he told them plainly: he had accepted a see governed by heresy and sealed his acceptance with an unlawful oath, and he could not answer for it before God. He urged them to convene a council and restore the veneration of the icons. Then he died.

His resignation is one of the most consequential acts of repentance in the Church’s history. It opened the way for the election of St. Tarasios and, three years later, for the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, which vindicated the holy images. Paul did not live to see it. He is the tenant who, having taken what was not his, gave it back—and the vineyard bore fruit because of it.

Born in Calabria to devout parents, Phantinos was given at the age of eight into the care of St. Elias the Cave-Dweller, and tonsured a monk at thirteen. He remained in that monastery some twenty years. When St. Elias reposed, Phantinos withdrew into the wilderness of Mt. Mercurion in northern Calabria and lived as a recluse, setting aside for an entire week a portion of bread and vegetables that most men would not have accepted for a single meal.

In old age, driven from Calabria by Saracen raids, he took his disciples and crossed to Greece, preaching as he went—through the Peloponnese to Corinth, Athens, Larissa, and finally Thessalonica, where he reposed in extreme old age. He is a saint of two worlds, Greek-speaking and Latin-dwelling, and his life is a reminder that the vineyard of God was being cultivated in southern Italy by Byzantine monks long after the political map had been redrawn.

Almost nothing survives of these sixteen beyond the fact of their monastic life and the manner of their death: they were put to the sword. The Church does not require a biography before it will remember a name. That they were monks means they had already given their lives once; the sword only ratified the gift.

Melitene in Armenia Minor gave the Church a great harvest of martyrs—the Forty-Five, the Thirty-Three, and these six, who were drowned. Beyond the number and the means of death, the tradition preserves little. They are commemorated with the monk-martyrs of Thebes as part of the day’s quiet company of the unremembered.

Instituted in 1769, this synaxis gathers on one day the archpastors who built the Serbian Church: St. Sava I, its first archbishop; St. Arsenije I, his successor and a wonderworker; St. Sava II, son of King Stefan the First-Crowned; St. Eustathius I; St. Nikodim; St. Daniel II; St. Joannicius II, the first Serbian patriarch; and St. Ephraim II. Most have their own days elsewhere in the year; today they stand together.

The connection to the Gospel is not forced. A synaxis of hierarchs is precisely a commemoration of husbandmen who rendered the fruits in their seasons—men entrusted with a vineyard they did not plant, who handed it on rather than seizing it.

Joined to the commemoration of the Serbian hierarchs is the memory of the Serbian new martyrs—the bishops, priests, monastics, and laypeople killed in the twentieth century, above all in the camps of the Second World War. The Serbian Orthodox Church made the commemoration of the New Martyrs of Jasenovac binding on the whole Church in 2010; the Russian Church keeps their synaxis on August 31 / September 13. Where the ancient martyrs of Thebes and Melitene are known only by number, these are known by name and by photograph, and they are near enough that their children are still alive.

Fiacre was Irish, reputedly of noble birth, and wanted none of it. After some years as a hermit on the banks of the Nore, where his cave, his well, and his garden drew more visitors than solitude could bear, he left Ireland altogether and crossed to Gaul. Bishop St. Faro of Meaux gave him land in the forest of Breuil, and there he built an oratory, a hospice for travelers, and a garden.

The garden is what he is remembered for. He fed the poor from it and healed with the herbs he grew in it, and he became in time the patron of gardeners across Europe. For a Sunday whose Gospel turns on a vineyard, a hedge, a winepress, and a tower, the presence of a saint who spent fifty years with his hands in the soil is a gift the preacher should not waste.

• “The meaning of ‘going into a far country’ is God’s great patience.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “He left little for them to do. All they had to do was take care of what was there and to preserve what was given to them.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “While deserving punishment, they themselves inflicted punishment.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “When He is long-suffering and not in hot pursuit of wrongdoers, demanding an account, He appears to be asleep or absent on a far journey.”—Blessed Theophylact
• “By fruit he referred to their obedience, demonstrated through their works.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “They always surpass their former offenses by their later ones.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “As the stone which forms the corner of a building makes continuous the walls leading to and from it, so Christ has bound all together in one faith.”—Blessed Theophylact
• “They themselves passed the sentence against themselves.”—St. John Chrysostom

”Hear another parable: There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country.”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

Many things does He intimate by this parable: God’s providence, which had been exercised toward them from the first; their murderous disposition from the beginning; that nothing had been omitted of whatever pertained to a heedful care of them; that even when prophets had been slain, He had not turned away from them, but had sent His very Son; that the God both of the New and of the Old Testament was one and the same; that His death should effect great blessings; that they were to endure extreme punishment for the crucifixion; the calling of the Gentiles, the casting out of the Jews. He puts it after the former parable that He may show even hereby the charge to be greater, and highly unpardonable.

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

Observe the great care that the owner took with this place and the extraordinary recalcitrance of the people. He himself did the work the tenants should have done. It was he who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it and built a tower. He left little for them to do. All they had to do was take care of what was there and to preserve what was given to them. Nothing was left undone but all accomplished. But they made little effort to be productive, even after they had enjoyed such great blessings from him. For when they had come out of Egypt, he gave a law, and set up a city, and built a temple and prepared an altar. Then he “went into a far country.” He was patient with them. He did not always keep a close account of their sins. The meaning of “going into a far country” is God’s great patience.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

Yet another parable He brings to them, showing that though they were deemed worthy to receive an immeasurable degree of care for their condition, they did not get better. The man, a householder, is the Lord Who in His love for man calls Himself a man. The vineyard is the Jewish people, planted by God in the land of promise. For He says, “Bring them in and plant them in Thy holy mountain” (Ex. 15:17). The hedge is the law which prevented them from mixing with the Gentiles; or, it is the holy angels who guarded Israel. The wine-press is the altar; the tower, the temple. The husbandmen are the teachers of the people, the Pharisees and the scribes. The householder, God, went into a far country when He no longer spoke to them in a pillar of cloud. Or, the departure of God into a far country is His long-suffering; for when He is long-suffering and not in hot pursuit of wrongdoers, demanding an account, He appears to be asleep or absent on a far journey.

”Now when vintage-time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers, that they might receive its fruit.”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

He sent his servants, that is, the prophets, “to receive the fruit.” By fruit he referred to their obedience, demonstrated through their works. But even here they exhibited their wickedness. They not only failed to give the fruit, after having enjoyed so much care, thus displaying their laziness, but also were angry with the servants who came. For those who did not repay what they owed should hardly have been indignant or angry. Rather, they should have asked for the householder’s forgiveness. But they not only were indignant; they even bloodied their hands. Therefore he sent a second and a third company of servants both to show their wickedness and the love toward humanity of the One who sent them. Why didn’t he immediately send his Son? In order that they might repent and condemn themselves for the things they had done to the others.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

“The time of the fruit drew near” during the years of the prophets. For the servants who were sent are the prophets who were abused in various ways by the husbandmen, that is, the false prophets and false teachers of those times. One they beat, as they did to Micah when Sedek struck him on the jaw (III Kings 22:24); another they killed, as they did to Zechariah between the temple and the altar; another they stoned, as they did Zechariah, the son of Jodae the high priest (II Chron. 24:21).

”And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another.”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

But they even here showed their wickedness, not only by failing to give the fruit, after having enjoyed so much care, which was the sign of idleness, but also by showing anger towards them that came. For they that had not to give when they owed, should not have been indignant, nor angry, but should have entreated. But they not only were indignant, but even filled their hands with blood, and while deserving punishment, themselves inflicted punishment.

”Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them.”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

Therefore He sent both a second, and a third company, both that the wickedness of these might be shown, and the love towards man of Him who sent them.

”Then last of all he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

But what does it mean that “it may be that they will have reverence for my son”? This is not the language of an ignorant man. Away with the thought! Rather, it is the language of one desiring to show the sin to be great and inexcusable. For though he himself knew that they would slay him, he sent him. When he says “they will respect,” he states what ought to have been done, that it was their duty to have reverenced him. Elsewhere he says similarly: “whether they hear or refuse to hear.” He is not ignorant of their motives. But lest any of the obstinate should say that his prediction was the thing that necessitated their disobedience, therefore he frames his expressions in a particular way, using indeterminate terms. For though they had been obstinate towards his servants, yet they ought to have reverenced the dignity of the Son.

”But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

What then do they do? While they had time to ask for pardon for their offenses and whereas they ought to have run to him to do so, they persist even more strongly in their former sins. They proceed to add even more to their previous pollutions. They always surpass their former offenses by their later ones. This is what he himself declared when he said, “Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.” For from the first the prophets used to charge them with these things, saying, “Your hands are full of blood,” and “They mingle blood with blood,” and “They build up Zion with blood.” But they failed to learn self-control. They had already received the commandment: “You shall not murder.” Yet, for all that, they did not put aside their evil ways.

”So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him.”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

And where do they wish to kill him? “Outside the vineyard.” Do you see how he prophesies even the place where he was to be slain? Well, they did cast him out, and they killed him. By the words of the prophet against them, he sought to persuade them that this certainly would come to pass. He signified only in a hidden way that he would “give the vineyard to others,” not mentioning the Gentiles and not affording his opponents a handle to use against him.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

Later the Son of God was sent and He appeared in the flesh. He said, “They will reverence My Son,” not unaware that they would kill Him, but signifying what ought to be. For, He says, they ought to honor the dignity of the Son even if they had killed the servants. But the husbandmen saw Him and said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill Him.” The Jews, too, said, “This is the Christ,” and they crucified Him. They cast Him out of the vineyard.

(The Catena also carries a lengthy entry at this verse from Epiphanius the Latin, +403—a Western witness, noted here for completeness but not reproduced, per this brief’s Eastern filter.)

”Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

Do you see how He prophesies even the place where He was to be slain? And they cast Him out, and slew Him.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

“When He cometh.” When? At the second coming? It seems to have this meaning, but a better meaning is this: the lord of the vineyard is God the Father Who sent His Son Who was slain by them. When He comes, that is, when He looks down on the lawlessness which the Jews committed, then He will miserably destroy them by sending the Roman army. And His vineyard, that is, His people, He will give to other husbandmen, that is, to apostles and teachers. Understand the vineyard to mean also the Divine Scriptures, in which the hedge is the letter, the wine-press that is dug is the depth of the Spirit, and the tower is theology, lofty and exalted. These Scriptures, then, were first possessed by bad husbandmen, the Pharisees; but God has let them out to us who cultivate them well. But they slew the Lord outside the vineyard, that is, outside those things of which Scripture spoke.

”They said to Him, ‘He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons.’”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

And Luke indeed says that He declared what these men should suffer; and they said, “God forbid”; and He added the testimony of Scripture. But Matthew says that they themselves delivered the sentence. This is not a contradiction. For indeed both things were done: they themselves passed the sentence against themselves; and again, when they perceived what they had said, they added, “God forbid”; and He set up the prophet against them, persuading them that certainly this would be. Nevertheless, not even so did He plainly reveal the Gentiles, that He might afford them no handle, but signified it darkly by saying, “He will give the vineyard to others.” For this purpose then did He speak by a parable, that themselves might pass the sentence—which was done in the case of David also, when he passed sentence on himself.

”Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the Scriptures: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”?’”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

Then, that they might learn that not only the nature of justice requires these things, but even from the beginning the grace of the Spirit had foretold them, and God had so decreed, He both added a prophecy and reproves them in a way to put them to shame, saying, “Did ye never read, The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner? This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes”—by all things showing that they should be cast out for unbelief, and the Gentiles brought in. Wherefore He added too, “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes,” declaring beforehand that the believing Gentiles, and as many of the Jews as should also themselves believe, shall be one, although the difference between them had been so great before.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

The stone means Christ Himself; the builders are the teachers of the Jews who rejected Him as if He were useless, saying, “Thou art a Samaritan and hast a demon.” But when He rose from the dead, He was set in place as the head of the corner, that is, He became the head of the Church, joining Jews and Gentiles in one faith. For as the stone which forms the corner of a building makes continuous the walls leading to and from it, so Christ has bound all together in one faith. This corner is marvelous, and is the Lord’s doing (see Ps. 117:22–23). For the Church which connects us and makes us one in faith is the Lord’s doing, and is worthy of all wonder, so well is it built. And in another sense is it marvelous, because the Word of Christ has been confirmed and substantiated by marvels, that is, miracles, so that the composition of the Church is marvelous.

Source: The Explanation of the Gospel of St. Matthew, on Matthew 21:33–42

Theophylact’s fullest contribution beyond the verse-level Catena entries is his second, allegorical reading of the vineyard at verse 40: the vineyard is not only Israel but the Divine Scriptures themselves—the hedge is the letter of the text, the winepress the depth of the Spirit, the tower the heights of theology. On this reading, the tenants’ crime is exegetical as well as moral: they held the Scriptures badly, and so they killed the Lord “outside the vineyard, that is, outside those things of which Scripture spoke.” He also presses the corner-stone image structurally rather than decoratively: a cornerstone is not an ornament but the stone that makes two walls into one building, and the Church’s unity of Jew and Gentile is what makes the stone “marvelous.”

Source: Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, on Matthew 21:33–46

Chrysostom’s homily on this passage does three things the verse-by-verse extracts only hint at. First, he reads the parable’s placement—immediately after the parable of the two sons—as deliberate escalation: the charge here is heavier and “highly unpardonable.” Second, he insists that the delay in sending the son is mercy, not miscalculation: the householder waits so the tenants will “condemn themselves for the things they had done to the others” and repent before the final envoy arrives. Third, he draws a direct line to 2 Samuel 12: like Nathan with David, Christ constructs a story in which the guilty man pronounces his own sentence before he realizes whose story it is. The parable is not primarily an accusation. It is a trap sprung by the conscience.

A note on the wider tradition: the Catena’s entry for verse 39 from Epiphanius the Latin (+403) offers a fully worked allegory—hedge as angelic protection, winepress as the Church where the martyrs are pressed, tower as the temple—that parallels Theophylact closely. It is a Western witness and is flagged here rather than folded into the Eastern commentary above.

The single most fruitful patristic move in this parable is the refusal to read “went into a far country” as divine absence. Chrysostom: “The meaning of ‘going into a far country’ is God’s great patience.” Theophylact says the same from the other direction—when God is long-suffering and does not press for an accounting, “He appears to be asleep or absent on a far journey.”

This reframes the entire parable. The householder is not away; He is restraining Himself. Every delay in the story is an act of mercy that the tenants read as an opportunity. The servants keep coming because the owner keeps hoping. The son is sent last not because the owner miscalculated but because he had run out of ways to be patient short of putting his own child within reach of their hands.

The pastoral edge here is sharp and worth handling carefully. What looks like God’s inattention is often God’s forbearance, and forbearance misread becomes the very ground of presumption. The tenants’ fatal error is not disbelief in the owner’s existence. It is a wrong conclusion drawn from his gentleness.

The parable turns on a legal fact that Christ never bothers to argue: the vinedressers are tenants. The land, the hedge, the winepress, and the tower were all in place before they arrived. Chrysostom presses this hard—“He left little for them to do. All they had to do was take care of what was there and to preserve what was given to them.”

The word Matthew uses is a leasing arrangement, and the fruit at vintage-time is rent. The tenants’ sin is not laziness first but a slow confusion about ownership: having worked the vineyard long enough, they begin to feel it is theirs, and the arrival of the owner’s servants comes to feel like an intrusion. By the time the son appears, the confusion has hardened into a plan—“Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.”

This is the theme that most directly touches the people in the pews and the man in the ambo alike. Parish, priesthood, marriage, children, health, money, a body, a life: all leasehold. The Epistle for the day quietly reinforces the point by pointing at the household of Stephanas, who “devoted themselves to the ministry of the saints”—tenants who understood the arrangement.

Christ’s closing quotation from Psalm 118 is not an afterthought but the hinge on which the whole parable turns from judgment to promise. Theophylact’s reading is the one to work with: the cornerstone is not decoration but structural necessity, “the stone which forms the corner of a building makes continuous the walls leading to and from it.” Two walls that were going in different directions are made one building by the stone the builders discarded.

The image is a Church image before it is a Christ image—or rather, it is a Christ image whose whole force lands on the Church. Chrysostom is explicit: the marvel is that “the believing Gentiles, and as many of the Jews as should also themselves believe, shall be one, although the difference between them had been so great before.” The stone is marvelous not because it is beautiful but because of what it holds together.

Note also that the builders in the image are professionals. They rejected the stone on expert judgment. The parable’s warning about religious expertise is not incidental.

Matthew and Luke report the ending differently—in Matthew the chief priests pronounce the sentence, in Luke they recoil with “God forbid.” Chrysostom refuses to treat this as a discrepancy: both happened, in that order. They condemned themselves, and then they realized what they had said.

He connects this directly to Nathan and David. The parable is a device for getting past a man’s defenses so that his own conscience delivers the verdict before his self-interest can intervene. This is a homiletic observation as much as an exegetical one, and it says something uncomfortable about preaching: the sermon that convicts is rarely the one that accuses. It is the one that tells a story true enough that the hearer walks into it before recognizing the terrain.

”Having learned the joyful proclamation of the Resurrection from the Angel, and having cast off the ancestral condemnation, the women disciples of the Lord spake to the Apostles exultantly: Death is despoiled and Christ God is risen, granting great mercy to the world.”

The hymn’s verb is despoiled—the same logic as the parable’s ending, where the thing that was thrown away turns out to be the thing that holds everything together. The tenants cast the son out of the vineyard and killed him; the hymn announces what that killing actually accomplished.

”The memory of the righteous is celebrated with songs of praise, but the Lord’s testimony is sufficient for thee, O Forerunner… After suffering with joy in behalf of the truth, thou didst proclaim even to those in Hades the God Who appeared in the flesh.”

Sung today for the last time this year. The Forerunner is the servant of the parable who was sent for the fruit and was killed for asking—and who, having been killed, went on preaching. The line about proclaiming “even to those in Hades” is worth pausing over on a Sunday whose Gospel ends with a rejected stone becoming a cornerstone: in both cases the rejection is not the end of the mission but the extension of it.

”By thy holy nativity, O pure one, Joachim and Anna were delivered from the reproach of barrenness; and Adam and Eve were delivered from the corruption of death…”

Appointed as the ordinary Sunday kontakion in this stretch of the calendar, between the leave-taking of the Dormition and the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos on September 8. Its theme is barrenness answered—a vineyard that finally bears. Against a Gospel about tenants who would not render fruit in its season, the kontakion sets Joachim and Anna, who had no fruit to render and were given it anyway.