25th Sunday
Ordinary Time (A)
Matthew 20:1-16
- First reading Isaiah 55:6-9
Seek the Lord while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near…
My thoughts are not your thoughts
- Second reading Philippians 1:20-24,27
Christ will be glorified in my body, whether by my life or by my death. Life to me, of course, is Christ
- Gospel Matthew 20:1-16
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner going out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard. He made an agreement with the workers for one denarius a day, and sent them to his vineyard. Going out at about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place and said to them, “You go to my vineyard too and I will give you a fair wage.” So they went. At about the sixth hour and again at about the ninth hour, he went out and did the same. Then at about the eleventh hour he went out and found more men standing round, and he said to them, “Why have you been standing here idle all day?” “Because no one has hired us” they answered. He said to them, “You go into my vineyard too.” In the evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his bailiff, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last arrivals and ending with the first.” So those who were hired at about the eleventh hour came forward and received one denarius each. When the first came, they expected to get more, but they too received one denarius each. They took it, but grumbled at the landowner. “The men who came last” they said “have done only one hour, and you have treated them the same as us, though we have done a heavy day’s work in all the heat.” He answered one of them and said, “My friend, I am not being unjust to you; did we not agree on one denarius? Take your earnings and go. I choose to pay the last comer as much as I pay you. Have I no right to do what I like with my own? Why be envious because I am generous?” Thus the last will be first, and the first, last.’
Background on the Gospel Reading
Today’s gospel reading is a continuation of the teaching that began in last Sunday’s gospel. We continue to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain. Recall that in Luke’s Gospel, this teaching is addressed to Jesus’ disciples. This is in contrast to the parallel found in Matthew’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus’ words are addressed to both the disciples and to the crowds.
These words from Jesus’ teaching are familiar to us. They constitute the crux and the challenge of what it means to be a disciple: Love your enemies, turn the other cheek, give to those who ask, do unto others, lend without expecting repayment, judge not lest you be judged.
There are several similarities between Luke’s and Matthew’s report of Jesus’ great teaching. Both begin with the Beatitudes. Matthew includes nearly all the content that Luke does; the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel is longer than Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. There are, however, differences in language and nuance. For example, Matthew presents this portion of the teaching as a contrast between Jesus’ teaching and the teachings of the law and the prophets. This is in keeping with Matthew’s concern to address his predominantly Jewish audience. It is likely that Luke omits this contrast because it was unnecessary for the Gentile believers for whom Luke is writing.
Another point of contrast between Matthew and Luke’s presentation is the terminology. In Luke, Jesus contrasts the behavior of his followers with the behavior of “sinners.” In Matthew, Jesus contrasts the behavior desired with the behavior of tax collectors and Gentiles. Matthew concludes the teaching about love of enemies with the admonition to be perfect as God is perfect; Luke concludes by emphasizing God’s mercy.
In both Gospels, Jesus’ words challenge those who would follow him to be more like God. God loves us beyond our expectations, beyond anything we can possibly imagine. In response to God’s love, we are to love as God loves, beyond expectations and with a depth beyond imagining.
All in the Mission!
No place for idleness but work for all
Romeo Ballan, MCCJ
The meritocracy – today a fashionable word – does not seem to be in line with God’s criteria. In today’s Parable, Jesus speaks of the surprising, ‘irrational’ and provocative attitude of the owner of the vineyard who pays all the workers with the same amount. But what is the message? The passage from Isaiah (1st Reading) gives us a clue to the understanding of the Parable of Jesus: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways” (v. 8). The Responsorial Psalm glorifies the Lord who is patient and merciful, kind towards all, and whose greatness cannot be measured. It is only with this in mind that we can approach the mystery of God and of His choices. To capture the message of Jesus (Gospel), one must move out from the parameters of a fixed and exact logic, leave aside the mentality of the accountant, and opt for spontaneity, adopt the logic of one who is in love. Jesus certainly shakes the widespread and frequently-found doctrine of merit, according to which salvation should be almost the right of the one who has “done a heavy day’s work in all the heat” (v. 12), the salary due to those who carry out certain given activities, by which the more one does, the more one earns divine favour. The complaints against the landowner (v. 11-12) come from people who are self-righteous and petty, like the prophet Jonah (Gen 4:1-2) and the elder son in the parable in Luke (15:29-30), quite unable to understand the love of the Father, envious and piqued by the welcome and the pardon given to the people of Nineveh and the younger son.
The Kingdom of God and his salvation have a missionary and universal dimension. They are gifts accessible to all, especially to the least, the sinners, the humble. “Jesus’ manner is identical towards all, Jews and pagans, the just and sinners. The old Covenant based on right and justice is replaced by the new one, founded exclusively on grace. The Kingdom of God is God’s gift, not a salary for the works of the Law. Salvation is not a recompense given through a contract, but is, first and foremost, a divine initiative, made up of love and communion to which men and women are invited to participate with joy and without limitations” (G. Ravasi). Including the poor and the neglected, because God cares even for the ones to whom nobody has given a day’s work (v. 7). God is a loving master: He welcomes everyone, rejects nobody; but He is free to have his own way of doing things (v. 15). He reveals a new style of relationships with people, an unsettling hierarchy of values which is above human ways (1st Reading), but this is the definitive hierarchy of the Kingdom.
The owner of the vineyard is an image of God, who calls everyone to work for the Kingdom: He calls at any time, at any age or condition. He calls each one individually, for different tasks… He has a great heart, and asks only that the workers trust Him, work for His Kingdom, for love and freely. He calls some to be workers and missionaries at daybreak: to these he grants the honour of being associated from the first hour in the work for the Kingdom. In the opening prayer we ask the Father to understand “the priceless honour to work in the vineyard at daybreak”. For those who have grasped the logic of love, of service and gratuity, the burden of the day and the heat are not a chastisement, but a privilege. The Mission to which Jesus calls is manifold in its forms, is in every place, at all times, and especially to those furthest off and the least. To live with a vision that is as wide as the world is a grace which renews people, communities and the Church itself. (*) That is how Paul understood it (2nd Reading), for whom “life to me is Christ” (v. 21), and who was therefore determined to “help you all to progress in the faith and even increase your joy in it” (v. 25). His total dedication gave him the confidence to invite the Philippians to behave “like people worthy of the Gospel of Christ (v. 27).
“You go into my vineyard too” (Mt 20:4) is the missionary call/command of a Master who has vast concerns and urgent projects, because “the harvest is great, but the labourers are few” (Mt 9:37). It is a call with a special meaning now, given the closeness of the missionary month of October and World Mission Sunday.
Two divine actions
Pope Francis
Today’s Gospel presents us with a surprising parable: the master of a vineyard goes out from the first dawn until evening to call in some workers, but in the end, he pays everyone equally, even those who had only worked one hour (cf. Mt 20:1-16). It would seem to be an injustice, but the parable is not to be read through wage criteria; rather, it intends to show us the criteria of God, who does not calculate our merits, but loves us as children.
Let us look more closely at two divine actions that emerge from the story. First, God goes out at all hours to call us ; second, He repays everyone with the same “coin” .
First, God is he who goes out at all hours to call us . The parable says that the master “went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard” (v. 1), but then continues to go out at various times of the day until sunset, to look for those whom no one had yet hired to work. We thus understand that in the parable, not only the men are the ones who work, but above all God, who goes out all day without tiring. This is how God is: he does not wait for our efforts to come to us, he does not examine us to assess our merits before seeking us out, he does not give up if we are late in responding to him. On the contrary, he himself took the initiative and in Jesus “went out” — towards us, to show us his love. And he seeks us at all hours of the day, which, as Saint Gregory the Great states, represent the different stages and seasons of our life up to old age (cf. Homilies on the Gospel, 19). For his heart, it is never too late; he always seeks us and awaits us. Let us not forget this: the Lord always seeks us and awaits us, always!
Precisely because he is so big-hearted, God — this is the second action — repays everyone with the same “coin” , which is his love. Here is the ultimate meaning of the parable: the labourers of the final hour are paid like the first because, in reality, God’s justice is a superior justice. It goes further. Human justice says to “give to each his own according to what he deserves”, while God’s justice does not measure love on the scales of our returns, our performance or our failures: God just loves us, he loves us because we are his children, and he does so with an unconditional love, a freely-given love.
Brothers and sisters, sometimes we risk having a “commercial” relationship with God, focusing more on our prowess than on his generosity and his grace. Sometimes even as a Church, instead of going out at all hours of the day and extending our arms to all, we can feel like we are top of the class, judging others who are far away, without thinking that God loves them too with the same love he has for us. And even in our relationships, which are the fabric of society, the justice we practise sometimes fails to break free from the cage of calculation, and we limit ourselves to giving according to what we receive, without daring to go the extra mile, without counting on the effectiveness of good done freely and of love offered with a generosity of heart. Brothers, sisters, let us ask ourselves: do I, a Christian, know how to go out towards others? Am I generous towards everyone, do I know how to give that extra understanding and forgiveness, as Jesus has done and does every day with me?
May Our Lady help us to convert to God’s measure: that of a love without measure.
Angelus, 24/09/2023
Trust in God’s goodness
José Antonio Pagola
I’m more and more convinced that many of those who call themselves atheists are men and women who, when they reject God, are really rejecting a «mental idol» that they’ve fabricated when they were children. The idea of God that they carry within and with which they’ve lived for some years has ended up small. There came the time when that God resulted for them a being so strange, inconvenient, and bothersome that they’ve gotten rid of it.
It’s not hard for me to understand these persons. Dialoguing with some of them I recalled more than once certain words of the patriarch Maximos IV during the Council: «Nor do I believe in the god in which the atheists don’t believe». In reality, the god that some have suppressed in their lives is a caricature that they’ve falsely formed of him. If they’ve emptied their soul of that «false god», isn’t it so that they can make room some day for the true God?
But how can someone today encounter God? If they draw near to those who call themselves believers, it easily could happen that they’ll find us praying, not to the true God, but to a small idol upon which we project our interests, fears, and obsessions. A God whom we pretend to make our own and whom we try to use for our benefit, forgetting God’s immense and unfathomable goodness for everyone.
Jesus breaks through all our schemes when he presents us in the parable of the «lord of the vineyard» with that God who «gives everyone their denarius», whether they earned it or not, and says thus to those who protest: «Are you going to be jealous because I’m generous?»
God is good with all, whether we deserve it or not, whether we’re believers or atheists. God’s mysterious goodness is way beyond the faith of believers and beyond the unbelief of the atheists.
What we must do is forget our schemes, keep silent within, listen deep within to the life that beats in us… and wait, trust, let our being be open. God doesn’t indefinitely hide Self from one who seeks God with a sincere heart.
‘God awards according to merits’ is the epitaph on the tomb of love
Fernando Armellini
Introduction
The terms Eucharist and charisma are well known. They are derived from the Greek‘charis,’ which means benevolence, free gift, giving joy and happiness. We feel great satisfaction when we receive a graduation diploma after so much work and sleepless nights. However, a simple flower given by a loved one at a moment in which they declare their love awakens in us immense joy. The gift produces a unique emotion because it signifies that someone thinks and loves us while tenderly pronouncing our name.
Introducing the criteria of retributive justice, accountability, reward and punishment, threat and flattery, recording merit and transgression in our relationship with God is a diabolic deformation of faith. The rabbis had cataloged people into four categories: the just, if they observe all the law; the wicked, if transgression prevails in them; the mediocre, if merit and fault are equivalent; the repentant if they ask forgiveness from their sin. With the principle: ‘Reward is given only for good work,’ they decreed the end of a love relationship.
The dialogue between God and human beings is established only where there is a free encounter, free gift, unconditional reciprocal love. Whoever loves claims nothing and expects nothing other than to see the loved one smile and rejoice. In the line of the prophets, the best among the rabbis said to the Lord: ‘Your salvation is manifested in this: you are merciful to those who have no treasure of good works.’ ‘What you’ve done is grace because, in our hands, there were no good works.’ Jesus made this righteousness ofGod his own.
First Reading: Isaiah 55:6-9
The Israelites have been in Babylon for 50 years. Far from their land, they havesuffered and cried (Ps 137). The elders still remember the dramatic scene of the holy cityin flames and the bloodthirsty and violent soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar invading her. Withtears in their eyes, they told the story to their children born in exile, instilling in them the hope and the expectation of the Lord’s vengeance. They learned in the catechism that God is just: He rewards the good and punishes the wicked. For this, they are sure that the Lord will punish the enemies of his people. Israel has only to wait, and she will see that the Lord will not leave the wicked unpunished one day.
In this historical and cultural context, a prophet emerges, who utters a disconcerting oracle: God does not think so. It is necessary to change this evil way of thinking because it is a curse to attribute such thinking to him. “The wicked—that is, the Israelite who expectsreprisal from God—forsakes his way,” the unrighteous person makes his thoughts wicked(v. 7).
Even before distancing from moral miseries, the conversion required by the prophetdeals with a readjustment of the image of God, conceived reasonably, without staying so close to man. The Lord challenged all the naive projections that man holds about him. “It is that my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are different from mine. For as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (vv. 8-9).
The person also comes out revalued by this revelation. If they leave the vindictive idol they created, they progressively assimilate the thoughts and feelings of the true God. They experience a growing and healthy disgust for their own meanness and pettiness.
Second Reading: Philippians 1:20c-24,27a
The Letter to the Romans concluded last Sunday. For four weeks, we will have a passage from the letter to the Philippians as a second Reading. Paul had come to Philippi, a city of Macedonia, in 49 A.D., together with Timothy, Silas, and perhaps even Luke. The city—a major cultural and economic center—was most famous for the battle on the plain. The army of Octavian and Anthony had overcome that of Brutus and Cassius. At Philippi, the apostles stayed only for a few days. They were able to initiate a community—the first in Europe. They began speaking to a group of women gathered around, one of whom was Lydia, who was converted and baptized along with her family after the Lord opened her heart to adhere to the words of Paul (Acts 16:11-15).
Among the communities the apostle founded, where there was often disagreement and friction, Paul’s relationship with the Philippians was idyllic, based on solid friendship and mutual, genuine sympathy, to the point that he accepted aid and gifts only from them. “You alone opened for me a debit and credit account, and when I was in Thessalonica, twice you sent me what I needed” (Phil 4:16).
He wrote the letter from Ephesus at a difficult time. He was, in fact, in prison becauseof the Gospel. Communication between the two cities was pretty easy and quick. Frequent contact and the news passed easily. From a dealer, a traveler passing through, or a Christian sent especially; the Philippians came to know about the misadventures of the apostle. They decided to show him their friendship and concern with a concrete gesture of solidarity. They had collected gifts and instructed Epaphroditus to bring them to Paul.
After receiving this testimony of affection, the apostle wrote the letter to the community of Philippi. In it, he reveals the most intimate, sweetest, and most tenderemotions of his heart. The passage recalling the arrival of Epaphroditus is moving: “our brother who worked and fought at my side and whom you sent to help me in my great need” (Phil 2:25) and the words with which he sends him back to Philippi with a letter: “Receive him with joy, as is fitting in the Lord. Consider highly persons like him, who almost died for the work of Christ; he risked his life to serve me on your behalf when you could not help me” (Phil 2:29-30).
For many years, Paul has worked for the cause of the Gospel. He endured suffering and overcame opposition. In Ephesus, while in prison, he begins to feel fatigued and theweight of years. He thinks more often of an encounter with Jesus, to whom he dedicatedhis life. He wants to die to be with Christ but also would like to continue to work for the cause of the Gospel and to confirm the community he founded in the faith.
Faced with this alternative, he recognizes that it would be better to die. However, the churches are still in need of him. With a generous gesture of abandonment to the will of God, he is said to be willing to postpone his meeting with the Lord to continue to serve the brethren. The famous statement: “For to me, living is for Christ and dying is even better”(v. 21) is the synthesis of his feelings and his deep faith. For this reason, this is written on his tomb in Rome.
Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16a
There is something unfair and irritating in the behavior of the owner referred to in theparable. He acts generously but does not take merit into account. Nobody forbade him tobe charitable with his money. However, rewarding those who had appeared at the 17th hour and who until then had remained idle and, perhaps, had done nothing but loiter is highly illogical. Those who deserved recompense, if anyone, were those who had struggledmost, the workers of the first hour. We stipulate contracts based on certain principles, and these are not observed in the parable.
It is precisely in the provocative act of the master that the central teaching of the story is couched. Let’s find out. It is harvest time. The ripened grapes are collected and crushed, paying attention to the time and moon’s position. For owners of large vineyards, these aretense days. They need workers and laborers who do not have a steady job and know how totake advantage of the kindness of the tenants to snatch a favorable contract. The morewilling place themselves well before dawn at strategic points. They expect that someone may pass to hire them. It is at this point that our parable begins.
Even before sunrise, behold, the tenant arrives breathless. He has been on his feet for more than two hours. He has scheduled the day’s work, placed the tubs, baskets and barrels. He baked the bread and prepared the olives to be distributed to the workers at midday. His face is tense and from his look, snappy, almost nervous gestures, he shows all his concerns and haste. A few words to agree on the payment, and behold, the first group, the early risers, are already in the vineyard.
The eagerness of the master to conclude the work as soon as possible is really great. In fact, he comes out four more times searching for workers: at mid-morning, midday, at three in the afternoon, and when he calls the last group, it was already 5:00 p.m., an hour before the end of the workday. So far, nothing strange; everything is normal and logical.
We begin to identify the characters: the master is God or Christ; the workers are the disciples who, at different times of their lives, respond to the call; the vineyard is the Christian community, where work is not lacking and must be done with extreme urgency. The haste is the same that we find in the disposition given by Jesus to his envoys; “Do not stop at the homes of those you know” (Lk 1:4) because there is no time to lose. The day is the image of everyone’s life, and the evening is the time of the righteous judgment of God.
We thus come to the crux of the parable. The law states: “Do not exploit the lowly and the poor daily-wage earner, whether he be one of your brothers or a foreigner whom you find in your land and in any of your cities. Pay him daily before the sun goes down because he is poor and he depends on his earnings. Then he will not cry to Yahweh against you, and you will have no sin” (Deut 24:14-15) and, in fact, the master ordered the workers to be put in line and handed to all a silver coin… beginning from the last.
Here is the impropriety! If he had rounded the pay of those who had worked only one hour, secretly, without attracting attention, there would be nothing to object to for compassionate reasons. However, provoking the rage of those who, after 12 hours of laborwith sunburned faces and limp with fatigue, seems downright cruel. The workers of the first hour, despite their aching limbs, are subjected to an irritating scene. They unbelievingly observe their colleagues receiving an undeserved pay with the shameless and relaxed audacity of layabouts.
In this surprising and disconcerting behavior of the master, the message of the parable is perceived. With the first hour workers, he had agreed to a silver coin, with others what would be just had not been decided upon.
The lack of understanding comes from the lack of clarity about what the boss meant by just. The workers understood him according to their own criteria. They were convincedthat he would take account of merit. Instead, the owner follows his own justice principle and distributes the pay in a completely free and open way. He did not wrong anyone; he just decided not to consider merit. He gave everyone according to their need and, of course, the first to benefit were the last, the poorest (v. 16). That is the surprise of God; thatis his strange way of conceiving and practicing justice. The parable is the clearest and most provocative denouncement that can be imagined of the religion of merit taught by the spiritual guides of Israel (and supported by many even today).
The people—catechized by the priestly caste—forgot the good God, father, husband,and faithful friend preached by the prophets. They were convinced that the Lord was alegislator and a judge, so the relationship with him could only be one of the servants beforethe master. The rabbis taught: ‘He who fulfills a precept acquires for himself a lawyer, who commits a transgression, acquires for himself a prosecutor. All God’s judgments are based on measure for measure.’ They completed their catechesis talking about books kept inheaven, on which the meritorious deeds and transgressions were carefully noted.
According to this logic, God could not give anything for free. To receive his blessing, you had to earn it. To the objection: ‘The Bible says that Abraham was called by Godwhile still a pagan. He was not just; therefore, his vocation was completely a free gift.’ The rabbis replied, ‘Even if it is not explicitly stated, Abraham certainly had done good works; he had earned his vocation!’
With his parable, Jesus destroyed, forever, this self-righteous way of relating to God.The love of the Lord is never bought, conquered, or assessed according to good works. It is received freely and in proportion to need. “God has filled the hungry with good things, but he sent the rich away empty” (Lk 1:53). He never tires of going out to meet anyone, even when he misses all they fail to turn up. God does not pay according to merit. No one canfeel they are in credit with him (Lk 18:9-14). Before God, we are all children: we turn our eyes to the Father and expect from him all the best.
The religion of merit stems from the conviction that getting into the vineyard of the Lord—that is, the Kingdom of God—is equivalent to making an immense effort to observe the commandments and precepts. So we ask: how is it possible that those who scrupulously practice the law of God can be rewarded to the same degree as those who have neglected it? Why does God only call those at the last hour, who are saved only in the nick of time, must be part of the heavenly inheritance in the same way as the servants who have remained faithful throughout their whole lives?
Many ‘just ones’ feel an unacknowledged envy against those who are converted at the last moment, had the good fortune to ‘work less’ and enjoy life more. However, thinking that joy consists of being far from God and that fidelity to his word deserves a prize is long from the mark. An example may help us to grasp the ambiguity of this way of thinking.One person may start to study music at an early age and practice for many hours a day. Another, at the age of 70, decides to put their hands on a piano at the age of 70, when other interests in life have waned and do so with little enthusiasm. What ‘reward’ awaits the two? Nothing more than this: the joy of relishing the music. Their enjoyment will be different: the one who started early had more time to savor the pleasure of performing andlistening; their joy is more intense and more profound.
Blessed are the servants who came first in the ‘vineyard of the Lord.’ Theyundoubtedly have also struggled. They have enjoyed ‘since morning’ the presence of the Lord. The first hour workers are those who have spent every day of their lives in intimacywith God and in listening to His Word. The others who presented themselves late, who did hide when the Lord came to call them, have lost many opportunities that would otherwise have been offered to them.
Those who defer their entrance into the Kingdom of God do not anger God. He does not punish them for this. He complains, yes, because he wants to involve people earlier in his love and make them happy. This indecision, perplexity, hesitation in abandoning themselves to him also equates to moments of lost joy. Every moment the bride spends without the groom is a moment of missed love.
With this parable, the evangelist, who addressed Christians imbued with a self-righteous mentality, also wanted to put the disciples on guard against the danger of competition within the community. No one can think of themselves as superior to others because no one can consider themselves a veteran just because they were converted first orpractices the Gospel more faithfully. No one is master of the ‘vineyard’; they are allworkers, all are brothers and sisters.
The parable is not ended. After the words of the master, how did those who were murmuring react? Have they accepted? Have they continued to grumble? Have they responded with insults? Have they thrown the money in the face of the winemaker? Have they vowed to never come back to work for him? The reaction that we attribute to the workers in the parable reflects our response to the goodness and generosity of God. In hisvineyard, we commit ourselves freely. We do not do good to others to win a prize. It would be the worst of selfishness to use the poor and needy to accumulate merit for ourselves.
READ: This parable is not a popular one. Notice that it has several endings as if the author did not know how to deal with this teaching of Jesus. Pay attention to all the characters and their reactions.
REFLECT: Why is it difficult to rejoice in the great fortune of another? People get jealous when they think someone has something that belongs to them—or even when they simply want what another has. What is your reaction to this parable?
PRAY: You can always find someone who has more than you and others who have less. In your prayer, ask to avoid envy. Jealousy destroys relationships. Pray to avoid it at all costs and remember that life can be unfair. Pray for a heart that delights in the well-being of the other.
ACT: When something good happens to another, join in the celebration and try to move beyond self-centeredness. Make an act of genuine appreciation and delight in the blessings received by someone in your circle of friends.
