From the Catholic Liturgy for
the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sept. 24, 2017. Gospel: Mt 20:1-16.
Theme: – The Free Gift and Call
of God. When people hear today’s Gospel most come away thinking,
"That sure doesn't sound very fair to me! The guys who put in an hour's
work ended up getting as much money as those who sweat it out in the sun
all day long!" Now, if Jesus had
intended to give us a course in business ethics and hiring practices, then
these people would be right! But we must remember that this story is a parable, that is, a simple fictitious story
told to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson and to begin to understand it,
we have to look at the symbolism used by Jesus. You see, in this parable the landowner is God. The vineyard is the Kingdom of Heaven.
And the workers are you and me,
that is, everyone on planet Earth. The various hours of the day represent the different times in life that God’s
call can come to us. I think there are 3 main lessons here…
1) The Call originates with God, it is his initiative…This is important to
remember because it teaches us something that, it seems to me, most people
I meet - including many Catholics - seem to forget: that we have no right
to Heaven, to eternal life. Humanity, in the persons and choices of our first
parents, Adam and Eve, gave up God's original invitation to Paradise, to the
Vineyard, by choosing to sin, to live life on our own terms and according to
our own desires. And each one of us has agreed with Adam and Eve each time we
have personally chosen to sin…so we can’t just blame them!
2) But God calls each one of us in a particular and
individual way and at a time in our lives when he might be most open to saying
“yes”. When God look out at us
humans, all standing around on planet Earth, like those men in the parable with
nothing to do and waiting for work, He doesn’t just see billions of faces all
lost in the crowd. No, God sees the individual, He sees you and me personally,
and not just our faces but our hearts, our minds, our most intimate selves. And
he calls us in a time and in a manner in which we might be most open to saying
“yes” to going into the Vineyard.
3) And lastly, responding to the Call of God requires work,
effort, on our part. We just don’t say “yes,
thank you, God” to the call and keep standing around doing nothing! We respond in faith to the invitation to the
Vineyard by building up our relationship with God through prayer and the
sacraments, by laboring over the reformation of our lives, by being of service
to others. In the parable, these good works are symbolized by the sweat
and labor of the workers, because as St. Paul tells us, co-operating with God's
grace requires a lot of hard work on as we make our way through this world
with all its distractions and temptations.
So, let's thank God for
this free underserved unearned gift of His grace. Let's praise Him for inviting
us into the Vineyard of the kingdom although he has no need to do so. And let's ask him to strengthen our hard
work as we labor to be found worthy, at the end of our lives, to inherit the free
unearned undeserved gift of eternal life.
No comments:
Post a Comment