25th Sunday of Year A, September 24, 2023

 
“The real reward we receive working in God’s vineyard is not the salary's money, but the gift of a transformed heart, capable of sharing the Father's goodness.”

We pray therefore in this holy Mass that we labour to imitate Christ. Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Isaiah 55,6-9; Psalm 144 (145); Philippians 1,20c-24.27a; Matthew 20,1-16; 25th Sunday of Year A, September 24, 2023)

God's ways are not our ways (Isaiah reminds us today) just as his thoughts are not our thoughts. Between them there is the same distance that separates the sky from the earth. And yet, despite this distance, God draws close to our lives, he lets us find him if we seek him and he opens new ways to us, teaching us to walk his own paths.

The parables urge us to follow God's directives. By listening to them and meditating on them we will come to accept the invitation that Paul addresses to the Philippians: "Make yourselves worthy of the gospel of Christ" (Phil 1,27). The typical force of each parable becomes even more effective, almost discomforting and in the account of Matthew 20 very disconcerting. At the end of the parable, the owner of the vineyard - who is a metaphor for God - is forced to justify his behavior in front of the murmurs of the workers about him. Usually, in the Bible, it is men who have to justify themselves before God. Here it is the opposite. And it is important that it is so. We too have the right to ask God for explanation of many of his ways of acting that seem incomprehensible to us at first sight. God's answer, however, does not reach only our intelligence; it involves our life; it does not leave us as it found us. At the end of the parable, the master demonstrates to his workers that he has behaved justly, and he does so by making the workers who murmur against him righteous. He wishes to free them from their envious eye, to allow them to assume his own gaze.

Jesus' story presents us with this master going out at different times of the day to hire his workers. He continues to hire them even when it would seem too late: what's the point of calling someone to work for just one hour? And yet, even that single hour is important to that master. Even more important to him are those workers who at five o'clock in the afternoon have not found anyone to hire them to work. They tell him: "No one has hired us" (Matt 2,7). So it wasn't laziness that didn't allow them to find work, rather no one chose and called them. Whoever was rejected by others is now chosen by him. Furthermore, he will give everyone the wages agreed with the first hour workers, who immediately protest; and we easily understand why. Their recrimination (the parable states) stems from an envious eye (Matt 20,15) that is unable to let itself be surprised by the goodness of this master. However, he is not unjust, inasmuch as he does them no wrong: "Didn't you perhaps agree with me for a denarius?" (Matt 20,13), he tells them; however he does not limit himself to justice, but he goes beyond it to indicate that he is "good". The justice that first-hour workers would expect remains linked to a performance-retribution scheme: I've done a lot, you owe me a lot; to those who have done the least, you owe the least. But if we apply this scheme to our relationship with God, don't we end up disfiguring his face into that of a master? And what is more, we deform ours into that of servants? God is not a master, he is a Father; and we are not his servants, we are his children. The logic underlying our relationship with God cannot be of a servile or commercial nature, based on the sole criterion of just retribution. A different logic takes over, that of "Goodness". Reasoning according to human logic, and placing ourselves this time not from the point of view of the workers, but from that of the boss, we should conclude that he harms his own interests: as an employer, in fact, he would give one of his workers more than what he deserves. However, God does not base the relationship with his children on the basis of these calculations, but on his goodness, which is expressed, in particular, in the form of gratuitousness.

A question remains latent, which often surfaces in our hearts and corresponds to what the workers of the first hour murmur. What's the point of having worked so hard if you then receive the same reward? Luke's parable of the "merciful father" comes to our aid here, which replies to the protest of the eldest son: "Son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours" (Luke 15,31). The good fortune of having been called from the first hour of the day lies precisely in the communion offered to us with the Father's love. Everything that belongs to him he wants to be ours too, above all his gratuitousness towards everyone. The real reward we receive working in his vineyard is not the salary's money, but the gift of a transformed heart, capable of sharing the Father's goodness. In other words: we are granted the possibility of abandoning our ways to follow God's. Anyone who sets his heart on the reward demanded for his own merit risks being told: "Take your own, take what is rightfully yours, and go away" (cf. Matt 20,14). Instead, those who let their heart dwell in the goodness of the Father come to enjoy not the wages of the worker, but the communion of the son: “All that is mine is yours and you are always with me! “. Then we too can exclaim with Paul: "For me life is Christ" (Phil 1,21). Thus, to be with, and be like, Christ is the real gain! + John I. Okoye.

(graphics by chukwubike)