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Commentary of the Gospell for August 21th, 2024
“Let’s start this reflection by being real with ourselves (which is the hardest kind of honesty, as Saint Teresa of Avila said, “humility is walking in truth”). We’ve probably all felt jealous at some point when someone else is good, even better than us. We might have even thought that the whole ‘God forgives everyone and everything’ thing… well, it can’t be true, because some people sin a whole lot… The person writing this will admit without shame that these feelings have sometimes crept into my own heart.
Today’s parable touches on this very envy when one of the first workers, the ones who’d toiled all day under the sun, complains that one of the latecomers gets the same pay as them, the early birds who’d been working nonstop. It’s not fair! A cry comes from our hearts: “We should get paid more than them, they only worked for an hour at the end of the day.”
But we need to look closer at the parable and the Gospel itself. In reality, there’s only one wage. It’s not measured in money. The wage is the possibility, the opportunity, the gift, the grace, the luck, the good fortune, the incomparable blessing of having participated and being able to continue participating in the Kingdom of God. There’s no greater wage than that. There’s no other prize, bigger or smaller. Following Jesus is participating in Life and opening ourselves to love, justice, and brotherhood. What a joy to be part of the Kingdom! What a joy to be like God and to be able to forgive as He does, to be merciful as He is, to reconcile as He does, to be bearers of God’s love to everyone around us! That’s living, and everything else is just a story and a waste of time.
Some workers in the parable didn’t understand it this way. What a shame! I feel for them. I’m sure that if we get to know Jesus a little and let Him into our hearts, we’ll appreciate the gift of the Kingdom. And we’ll give thanks for this immense and undeserved gift.”