TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
20 SEPTEMBER 2026
The
prophet Isaiah tells his people to seek the Lord while he may be found. They are in exile in Babylon. Some of them have abandoned God’s law and
have become scoundrels and wicked.
Others have become so complacent in Babylon that they have resisted
God’s call to return to Jerusalem from their exile and rebuild their nation. The prophet insists that God can be found,
because he is near. Then the prophet
describes the Lord whom they seek. God
embodies mercy and generosity. Speaking
for God, the prophet affirms the obvious:
God’s thoughts and ways are far from human thoughts and ways. They are ways of compassion and
reconciliation.
After his
dramatic encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, Saint Paul
never stopped seeking the Lord. By
seeking the Lord and trusting in the Lord’s presence in his ministry, Paul has
become the Apostle who has spread the Good News throughout the known
Mediterranean world. In his proclamation
of the Gospel, he has urged countless converts to seek the Lord and trust in
his presence in their lives. Today, we
hear his letter to the Philippians. Although
he is confined in prison, he continues to seek the Lord. He does not know what will happen to
him. But, because he is so confident in
the ways the Lord has responded to his seeking, he says that it does not matter
whether he will die soon or remain alive.
He prefers to die in the Lord, because he trusts that his earthly life
is already centered in Christ. But he is
also willing to continue his earthly life, because he trusts in his fruitful
labor. Even his current suffering bears
fruit. His example encourages the
Philippians (and us) to seek the Lord even when they are suffering. He may be the last of the Apostles. But he knows that the reward of faithful
discipleship applies just as much to him as to those twelve Apostles who had
been with the Lord in his ministry and in his death, resurrection, and
ascension.
Today’s
parable gets our attention, because we tend to sympathize with those who
started working at dawn and got paid the same amount as the workers who came at
sunset. Like those who worked all day,
we think that this pay scale is not fair.
We wonder if those who got paid for doing very little will encourage
people to become lazy. That is why Jesus
tells us this parable in the first place.
We tend to think only in human terms.
But Jesus insists that his ways are not our ways, echoing the argument
made by Isaiah the prophet in his day.
That is why today’s Gospel parable speaks
to us as surely as it spoke to the original listeners. The landowner is God. The vineyard is Israel. The harvest reflects the final judgment. The first workers hired to work in the
vineyard are the religiously observant of Jesus’ day. But the landowner finds that there are still
others who are seeking to work in the vineyard.
The landowner goes out five times to hire those who continue to seek,
with the last being tax collectors and sinners who have responded to Jesus’
call very late. The Lord is aware of so
many people who are seeking him, even without knowing it. And he responds by sharing the fullness of
his justice and mercy not only now, but at the harvest time.
We open ourselves to the Lord’s
mercy and justice when we realize that we are created in the likeness of
God. We do not earn mercy and justice,
nor are mercy and justice owed to us. The
Lord’s mercy and justice are pure and simple gifts. Today’s parable encourages us to be like
Saint Paul and turn more completely to the Lord, so much so that we realize
that we are in Christ Jesus, whether we live or die. The parable also calls us to turn to the Lord
while he is near. If we live our faith
more completely, then we might attract more people to the Lord, whether they
know they are seeking or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment