Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). These concluding words of the first reading of today’s Liturgy help our understanding of the gospel passage about the generous vineyard owner who overturns our human concepts of fairness.

In Jesus’ parable, retold in Matthew 20:1-16a, we hear about a landowner who needs workers to harvest his abundant crop of grapes. He hires laborers at dawn, nine o’clock, noon, and even as late as three and five o’clock. When the harvesters receive their agreed-upon wage at the end of the workday, those who arrived early in the morning and bore the bulk of the day’s work in the heat are enraged to discover that they have received the same compensation as those who worked only a short time in the late afternoon. In fact, the latecomers received their wages before those who labored all day. Jesus’s concluding words defy all human sense of justice: “Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Mt 20:16).

This gospel passage is disturbing because it touches upon the all-too-real feeling of envy that each of us has experienced at some point in our lives when we discovered that someone else was rewarded or recognized for work that we had actually done. We are challenged to realize that God’s view of reality encompasses a far wider perspective than we could ever imagine. His thoughts are high above our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways.

How are we to deal with what seems on the surface to be unequal and unjust treatment in this world? The cure for envy is not receiving affirmation or reward, but completely emptying ourselves of the need to compare with others.  A short phrase from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians completely changes our self-centered focus: “For me life is Christ…” (Phil 1:21). Paul continually challenges us to keep our eyes fixed on Christ and to allow ourselves to be conformed to His image. As we read further in his epistle: “Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:5-7,8).

If we take on the mind of Christ, our thoughts will be His thoughts, and our ways will be His ways.

Reflection by Br. Michael Marcotte, OSB