TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)
Is 55:6-9; Ps 145; Phil 1:20c-24,27a; Mt 20:1-16a
COMMENTARY
The Mission of the Generous Master of the Vineyard
In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus continues to teach His disciples about the bursting reality of the Kingdom of Heaven. And he does so again with the evocative parabolic language through the fixed introductory formula “The kingdom of heaven is like…”, as we saw last Sunday in the teaching on the need for fraternal forgiveness. The emphasis now is on God’s generosity in giving His payment, the image of salvation, to all those who are willing to work in His vineyard, even and especially those called in the last hours. This parable is first of all a Christological announcement: with and in Jesus the definitive time of divine salvation has come to humanity. This truth of God’s generous gift in Christ appears then also scandalous to some who are closed in their narrow human logic. The richness of the parable we have heard is still to be explored today, but we should first take due note of the right way to interpret the details of the story.
1. A Necessary “Caveat” on the Parable’s Interpretation
It should be remembered that parables are not allegories in which every detail must correspond to some message. Rather, they are stories in which the author wants to convey one main message, which thus becomes the lever on which the whole plot rests with the fictitious and sometimes even exaggerated details, “a lever on which one wants to make force,” to quote the famous Italian biblical scholar Card. Carlo Maria Martini.
Thus, this introductory note serves to clarify the central point of our parable, which, with its many details, has been interpreted in different ways throughout the centuries. There are those who see in the multiple goings out of the vineyard master the action of God in human history from the beginning of the world (from the “good morning” of history) to the present, from the time of Adam to that of Jesus. On the other hand, there are those who see here, in a more sophisticated way, the image of God’s call in the various stages of human life: childhood, adolescence, youth, adulthood, old age (St. Gregory the Great), or even in the various situations of the human mind (St. John Chrysostom)! All these interpretations, interesting but questionable (who knows if they were really in the mind of the author of the story), should not distract our attention from the focus of the parable that Jesus wants to convey: the “scandalous” generosity of salvation, offered by God in Christ to the “ last of the last,” and this provoked murmurs from those who considered themselves self-righteous and defenders of divine justice.
2. The Twofold Generosity of the Master of the Vineyard
The Master is generous to the workers in two ways. Firstly, his generosity consists in his tireless going out from early morning to offer work to those concerned. One can logically imagine that at every hour, from morning to evening, the Master would invite and welcome into his vineyard everyone who wished to come. He was generous in his patience and devotion in seeking workers. We have here a beautiful representation of the God who is great in love and who does not tire of going out at different times and in different ways (cf. Heb 1:1) to gather His children for the kingdom of heaven.
Secondly, the Master’s generosity is especially evident toward the last workers to whom he decided to give all the wages for the entire day. In other words, even though those who worked in the last hour (the eleventh according to the Jewish time division of the day, which corresponds to 5 p.m. in our time) worked fewer hours, they received the same amount of money as the others who had been working since the morning. This is a detail that disturbed many defenders of a God who is necessarily just in His actions. Therefore, some tried to justify the Master’s strange and “unjust” decision by assuming that these early workers had probably not worked well and had even been lazy, wasting the time of the work entrusted to them (as I saw in a modern movie)! Such a “logical” explanation seems very suggestive, but perhaps it completely misrepresents the full provocative force of the parable that Jesus wants to convey. Here, there is no longer the logic of human distributive justice, but only that of divine generosity, which always remains an unfathomable mystery to the human mind. God himself reminds us of this through the prophet Isaiah (heard in the first reading): “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. […] As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Is 55,8-9).
3. “Are You Envious Because I Am Generous?” The Vice of Human Envy To Be Avoided in Life and Mission
The end of the parable combines the main proclamation of God’s generous salvation for the least of these with a no less important moral lesson: we must beware of the “vice” of murmuring against God’s good work for others because of the envy that breeds in our hearts. The key phrase is the Master’s question to one of the murmurers: “Are you envious because I am generous?”, or literally, “Have you evil eyes because I am good?” Aside from the possible polemical undertone against the religious leaders of Israel who murmured about Jesus’ actions, this question is also a perennial reminder to all the “first” beneficiaries of divine salvation in the face of the possible “good fortune” of the last “employees.”
We must rejoice in God’s gratuitous generosity to all, rather than be saddened by God’s supposed lack of appreciation for our efforts. It is always about God’s gratuitousness to each and every one of us, who will never fully deserve His gift despite our supposed or actual “merits.” Even Israel was chosen by God as His chosen people without merit. Thus, God always freely offers the fullness of His salvation to everyone. And we must all rejoice together, like the father’s invitation to the eldest son in the parable of the prodigal son.
Finally, it is worth recalling the brief but important teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on envy, which begins with a powerful observation:
2538 […] Envy can lead to the worst crimes (Cf. Gen 4:3-7; 1 Kings 21:1-29). “Through the devil’s envy death entered the world” (Wis 2:24): “We fight one another, and envy arms us against one another…. If everyone strives to unsettle the Body of Christ, where shall we end up? We are engaged in making Christ’s Body a corpse…. We declare ourselves members of one and the same organism, yet we devour one another like beasts.” (St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in 2 Cor. 27, 3-4 PG 61, 588).
And again:
2539 Envy is a capital sin. It refers to the sadness at the sight of another’s goods and the immoderate desire to acquire them for oneself, even unjustly. When it wishes grave harm to a neighbor it is a mortal sin: St. Augustine saw envy as “the diabolical sin.”(Cf. St. Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus 4, 8 PL 40, 315-316) “From envy are born hatred, detraction, calumny, joy caused by the misfortune of a neighbor, and displeasure caused by his prosperity.”(St. Gregory the Great Moralia in Job 31, 45: PL 76, 621.)
And therefore:
2540 Envy represents a form of sadness and therefore a refusal of charity; the baptized person should struggle against it by exercising good will. Envy often comes from pride; the baptized person should train himself to live in humility: “Would you like to see God glorified by you? Then rejoice in your brother’s progress and you will immediately give glory to God. Because his servant could conquer envy by rejoicing in the merits of others, God will be praised.” (St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in Rom. 71, 5: PG 60, 448).
And so may it be in the lives of Christ’s disciples-missionaries and especially in their missionary activities. Amen.
Useful points to consider:
Pope Francis, Angelus, Saint Peter’s Square Sunday, 24 September 2017
In today’s Gospel reading (cf Mt 20:1-16) there is the parable of the day labourers in the vineyard, which Jesus recounts in order to explain two aspects of the Kingdom of God: the first is that God wants to call everyone to work for his Kingdom; the second is that, in the end, he wants to give everyone the same reward, that is, salvation, eternal life. […]
This is the message: there are no unemployed people in the Kingdom of God. Everyone is called to do their part; and there will be a reward from divine justice for everyone in the end — not from human [justice], luckily! —, but the salvation that Jesus Christ acquired for us with his death and Resurrection, a salvation which is not deserved, but donated — salvation is free — thus, “the last will be the first and the first last” (Mt 20:16). […]
Jesus wants to make us contemplate the gaze of that landowner: the gaze with which he looks upon each of the labourers searching for work and calls them to go to his vineyard. It is a gaze which is filled with attention, kindness. It is a gaze which calls, invites one to get up and begin a journey because he wants life for each of us; he wants a full, committed life, safe from emptiness and inertia. God excludes no one and wants each of us to achieve his or her fullness. This is the love of our God, of our God who is Father.
Pope Francis, Angelus, Saint Peter’s Square Sunday, 20 September 2020
[…] God behaves like this: he does not look at the time and at the results, but at the availability; he looks at the generosity with which we put ourselves at his service. His way of acting is more than just, in the sense that it goes beyond justice and is manifested in Grace. Everything is Grace. Our salvation is Grace. Our holiness is Grace. In giving us Grace, he bestows on us more than what we merit. And so, those who reason using human logic, that is, the logic of the merits acquired through one’s own greatness, from being first, find themselves last. “But, I have worked a lot, I have done so much in the Church, I have helped a lot and they pay me the same as this person who arrived last…”. Let us remember who was the first canonized saint in the Church: the Good Thief. He “stole” Paradise at the last minute of his life: this is Grace. This is what God is like, even with us. Instead, those who seek thinking of their own merits fail; those who humbly entrust themselves to the Father’s mercy, rather than being last — like the Good Thief — find themselves first (cf. v. 16)
