Dear Christ the King Family,
The workers in the vineyard remind me about work—specifically good work, and what good work gets us. Doing good work is a good thing. St. Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, says, “whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
And so—doing good work is a good thing. Work is our calling. God calls you to the work you are doing now because it is in this particular, special way that he wants you to love him best, and he will reward you well for your work.
But in today’s Gospel, the workers who showed up late get the same reward that the workers who showed up first get. They get equal pay, equal compensation, equal reward. Imagine winning first place in a race and then getting the same participation award as a person who joined halfway through and came in last. That doesn’t seem fair, does it?
Spoiler alert: it isn’t fair. Not in our human standards. But in the eyes of God, in the sacramental economy, grace can’t be quantified in a one-to-one transaction. You can’t put a price on mercy. And that is what Jesus is talking about in this parable: the gift-giving economy of grace that makes us all rich.
“Are you envious because I am generous?” We know that our God is boundless in love and compassion, power and might: so it shouldn’t come as a surprise at all that God is generous with his mercy, just as the landowner is generous with his pay. God loves to lavish himself on us. He gives without counting the cost because with him, there is always more. His love is extravagant. His love is abundant. He holds nothing back. There is always mercy for the sinner; there is always home for those who have left for a while. This is a God who goes above and beyond for not only one, but the many; not only me, but you, too, because he longs for the gift of ourselves in return.
God wants us to work hard in the vineyard not because he wants to extract labor from us, or count the blood, sweat and tears we give him—but because he wants to lavish himself on us: mercy, compassion, grace that knows no bounds. There, in the vineyard, is where Jesus, the true vine is; there, in the vineyard, is where God the Father, the vine grower, prunes us, nourishes us, and takes care of us. We, as his branches, through the privilege of our hard work, get to meet him in the vineyard again and again—at nine o’clock, at three o’clock, and five o’clock, and even into the late hours of the night. Even unto eternity!
With hope,
Sofia Benigno
Director of Evangelization & Youth Ministry
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