25th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Isaiah 55:6-9; Paul to the Philippians 1:20-24, 27; Matthew 20:1-16)

 

In our Gospel reading Jesus was teaching us about the kingdom of heaven, in which He pictured for us a most benevolent landowner trying to help local workmen in their needs. The landowner obviously represented the heavenly Father … and on realizing that, we should immediately listen to, and most carefully learn from, what he says and does, because in this parable Jesus is trying to help us come to know better and love more His heavenly Father; the Father for love of Whom, He Himself -- Jesus our Saviour and Redeemer -- embraced the Cross of Rome’s hatred, Israel’s disdain, and modern man’s indifference, with total commitment and sovereign peace.

How did Jesus therefore portray His heavenly Father in human terms for today's very ordinary everyday people?

First of all, the landowner was, and Jesus’ Father is, solicitous for and concerned about, ‘his’ people.  The landowner went out at 6am., 9am., 12noon, 3pm. and 5pm. looking for men without work, for workers needing employment to sustain their families.  Jesus is saying, ‘My Father is concerned like that, about humankind’s well-being on earth, and most of all, about the  salvation and eternal blessing of all who are My disciples, His adopted sons and daughters.

Jesus also told us that His heavenly Father is just: for He told us in the parable how the landowner took the trouble to agree with those he sought to hire about the generally accepted wage rate for the work to be done … and for the men hired later he promised to give them ‘what is just’.   You can also trust My Father, says Jesus, for the landowner kept meticulously to his promises regarding the wages to be given.

The parable’s teaching however, despite the fact that the landowner makes all possible efforts to do the good he envisaged –– is not really pleasant reading because we ourselves can understand and sympathetically feel something the disappointment felt by the earlier workers on receiving no more money than the latest comers.  And that shows that we are not fully in tune with the God and Father we worship and want to love totally in and with Jesus.

We cannot, however, I hope, in any way go along with the anger of those first workers, their antipathy towards their fellow workers who came late, nor their deep resentment as regards the landowner himself. 

Our first reading from the prophet Isaiah could have served as a warning for us when it said:

Our God Who is generous in forgiving says, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways.’

There is not just a ‘world of difference’ as we would say, between God’s thoughts and ours, but rather:

As high as the heavens are above the earth … My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways.’

‘My thoughts’ and ‘your ways’ ….

The landowner showed equal concern for all the men he had gone to so much trouble to hire.    At the end of the day, however, on receiving their wages, the early workers showed us – by their very first words – the poison in their hearts:

You’ve made these last one’s equal to us.

That was the very essence of their complaint ... the evangelist’s explanatory words ‘they thought that they would receive more’, are not their words!   What was really bugging – as we would say -- the first workers, was that:

You’ve made these last one’s equal to us, (whereas they should have got less than us).

And the humbling aspect of all this is that we – good Catholics and Christians though we try to be – can instinctively feel a sliver of sympathy with that attitude of the early workers:

            ‘They (the late and last comers) should have got less than us’

Dear People of God we can now understand better how Our Lord once (Mark 9:19) felt constrained to say:

            How long shall I be with you?  How long shall I put up with you?

God’s judgements ultimately are not such as to involve comparisons between human individuals’ endeavours: ‘this one has done more or less than that one’; God judges each of us according to our own deeds on this earth and ultimately, on the quality of love, earthly or heavenly, that has ruled, guided, and determined our lives.

Consider calmly and humbly, deeply, dear fellow disciples Our Lord,   what love – for your Father, your Saviour, your Guide, YOUR GOD – what love for Him  have you learnt from His Son’s life and death, what love have you allowed His most Holy Spirit to kindle in your heart for your Father in heaven?

Dear People of God, learn from Saint Paul … so very, very close to Christ,  and so alien to the ‘woke-ism’ poisoning today’s society …

            For to me, life is Christ, and death is gain!

The owner of the vineyard felt a deep compassion for those who had – through no fault of their own – been idle (and worrying?) for almost the whole day.  What good would a mere one hour’s pay be for their needs and those of their dependants? 

This is the picture which Our Lord wishes to give us of His heavenly Father Whose decisions in our regard are always motivated by His loving compassion.   That was how the work of our salvation began.  Mankind was under the cruel bondage of sin and could in no way help themselves, so God took pity on them and sent His beloved, only-begotten Son, to save them, as the owner of the vineyard had compassion for the workless labourers and their needy families.

But there is something else in the parable.  It gives us the picture of a Lord and God Who is just to all, good and gracious to all; but, to certain ones He is especially merciful.  God offers salvation to all men; His blessings and graces are amply sufficient for all; but for some chosen souls His mercy is boundless and overflowing.  Here we are introduced to the mystery of Predestination.

This mystery of our personal predestination is a very great mystery of love, not subject even to the disposition of Our Lord Himself, as Jesus said to the sons of Zebedee, James and John who asked … or whose mother asked … for places of privilege in His Kingdom:

My cup you will indeed drink, but to sit at My right and at My left is not Mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father.      (Matthew 20:23)

What is ahead of each of us?  How are we to respond, to co-operate best with, so that His will be fulfilled in us, that we might thus attain to the place He, in His great love, has prepared for us and to which He calls each one of us, each and  every day, year in, year out?

St. Paul writing to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 6:12) says:

            All things are lawful for me but not all things are beneficial.

The way to life is narrow, how are you and I to walk best along that way?? 

That is a liturgy which each one of us alone can celebrate, and if we do not celebrate it, then there will be one harmonic – known to, and listened for, by the Father -- missing in the great symphony of praise rising from Mother Church to the throne of God.  These are the events, the happenings, in our lives which though they may seem ordinary enough to other people, nevertheless, we – as did Israel of old – can rightly know them, unmistakeably, as the effects of God’s great goodness towards each one of us.

Therefore, let us all, with the Church and in the Church, thank God for all the marvellous things He has done for us in Christ … and that, of course,  we do best of all here at Mass and through our reception of Holy Communion.

However, in that context, let each one of us ever treasure, meditate on, give thanks for, all those blessings which God has lavished upon us as individuals.  For in them we are granted an opportunity to see what God wishes to do for us in the future; there, is foreshadowed the outlines of that beautiful and unique relationship which God wants to have with each one of us.

Such a constant faithful and trusting relationship with God can become a fount of joyous hope and grateful love bubbling up throughout our lives.  And when we reach our end on earth, we will join the family of the blessed in heaven finally freed from their straightened earthly circumstances, possibilities, and powers, and endowed with a previously unknown ability to lose ourselves in a mind-surpassing and soul-absorbing act of gratitude and praise before God.