Wednesday
of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time
August 19, 2015 8:30am
Today’s gospel parable is not
teaching us about good business practices.
It is not telling employers to
pay employees who work just part-time as much as they would pay fulltime
employees.
That would never work in the real
world.
This parable, like most of them,
has one main lesson.
Jesus’ main lesson is the
generosity of God.
Eternal life or entrance into
God’s kingdom is always a gift from God – a gift, no matter who we are or what
we have done to respond to God.
God gives this to anyone who
turns to him.
This turning to God opens us to
receiving the light and love and life that God wants to give us.
That is Jesus’ main lesson.
Now, we might ask:
Does this mean that we all get
the same thing and that there are no differences in eternity?
This parable doesn’t really
address that question.
Common sense tells us that we
have different capacities for happiness.
A four-year-old may find
happiness in getting to go to Arctic Circle for ice cream.
A person matured by life may find
happiness in the love of another or in giving of himself or herself for the
good of others.
So, there probably are
differences in our capacity to receive the light and love and life of God in
eternity.
But Jesus doesn’t get into this
or explain how it works.
He wants us to keep in mind that
it is all a gift from God to all of us.
We do need to do at least the
basic work, like the employee who worked just one hour in the story, and turn
to him and the Father.
And maybe Jesus doesn’t tell us
anything else because he doesn’t want us to compare ourselves to others like
some of the workers in the parable are doing.
He doesn’t want us to the trap of
comparing and seeing ourselves as better than some others and seeing them as
less.
He just wants us to focus on
God’s generosity and love and on our response by opening ourselves and our
lives as fully to God as we can.
