Today’s Scripture Readings can be understood as a plea to live a virtuous life, a life that exemplifies all that is wholesome about our human nature. Justice, compassion, mercy, selflessness, humility, and, above all, love, portray the best of who we can be. This is not to ignore the fact that we sometimes fall short of these virtues in our day-to-day living. Rather, it is to help us recognize that there is more goodness in the world than there is evil. It is found in the love of parents for their child, in the mercy we show the sick, the forgiveness we ask from a friend, and the compassion we have for one another. These little acts often go unnoticed but they are genuine expressions of a virtuous life.
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.
In the Penitential Rite of the Mass as well as the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we ask for, and receive, God’s mercy. And we come to the realization that we must forgive others just as we have been forgiven by God. Today’s Gospel (Matthew 18:21-35) began with Jesus speaking about the breadth of the forgiveness that we are called upon to offer. Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Peter thinks he is being generous.
On Monday we will be observing Labor Day, a national holiday to recognize the dignity of all who labor to provide for themselves and their families. It may come as a surprise to some that the Catholic Church has had a long history of encouraging the dignity of work and the rights of workers including encyclicals by Pius XI, John XXIII, and John Paul II. The “granddaddy” of them all is a papal encyclical issued on May 15, 1891, by Pope Leo XIII and it is known as “Rerum Novarum” which translates as “The Condition of Labor.”