A conscience is an important thing -- it guides us, tells us what is good and what is wrong, what is morally OK to do and what is not. A good practice is to make an examination of conscience every day before the day ends and to ask ourselves -- how much good have I done during that particular day and how many sinful and bad choices have I committed. However, there are times when we don’t want to listen to our good conscience’s advice. We would rather silence it, remove it, only because we know that a certain action we really want to do is wrong and sinful, yet it still seems so attractive and so tempting that we go ahead and do it. Jesus was like that Good Conscience to those chief priests and scribes to whom He addressed the parable about the man who planted a vineyard and hired tenants to manage it. He didn’t give them that vineyard but only asked them to maintain it and produce the fruit that belonged to the owner. However, the workers (tenants) didn’t want to give anything back, and so the result was that they killed even the owner’s son who came to ask for what was his. Jesus was correcting those who lived wrongly, and He gave them a good example, told them and showed them how to live. But many got angry and didn’t listen, and in the end, they killed Him. They wanted to remove Him from their sight. Whenever you and I want to silence our good conscience, we are just like those tenants from Jesus’ parable.
