25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The parable in today’s Gospel (Matthew 20:1-16) is a challenge to most people’s sense of justice. Our first inclination may be to take the side of those laborers who had worked hard all day in the vineyard and were not paid any more money than those who worked a single hour at the end of the workday. Insult is added to injury when the last get paid first while those who worked longest and hardest are made to wait for their pay. This kind of generosity shocks and angers those who had worked the longest, even though they had received exactly what they had agreed to – a full day’s pay for a full day’s work.

This parable raises more questions than it answers. Why did the landowner keep returning to the village square to pick up more workers for his vineyard? One would think that he would want to harvest his crops as quickly as possible so they don’t spoil in the field, yet he only hires a few workers at a time. And it is not that the laborers were not available. We are told that they had been there in the square all day and that no one had hired them. I suppose it should be noted that the laborers who were not hired until later in the day must have been very patient – or very desperate – waiting hopefully to earn some money to feed their families.

God is much like the landowner – generous in forgiving as Isaiah said in today’s First Reading (Isaiah 55:6-9). We owe a debt to God than we can never repay. The Lord doesn’t “charge some more than others”. He sent his Son, Jesus, to offer his life on the Cross for all of us. God owes us nothing, and yet he has given us everything. All the men called to work in the vineyard were equals – they all had hungry mouths to feed. The landowner had mercy on all of them, giving them what they needed – not simply what they had earned. This shows us how God has loved us in Christ. We are called upon to be as giving and forgiving of others as God has been to us. God loves all of us equally – the “cradle Catholic” the same as the convert; the sinner as much as the saint; every person in every pew. God calls us to labor in his vineyard of mercy, and to conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ (Philippians 1:27).