“Let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ.”
Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Lesson: Is 55:6-9
Epistle: Phil 1:20c-24, 27a
Gospel: Mt 20:1-16a
This Sunday’s Scripture from the Mass speaks on the promise and importance of continuous conversion in the Christian life.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.” The crux of the Gospel parable of the workers in the vineyard is found in the figure of this master of the vineyard, who seeks workers throughout the day, even up to the approach of dusk, at the literal and proverbial eleventh hour. The vineyard master acts in this way because conversion to the Gospel is not bound by time. The gift of faith and metanoia, that dramatic repentance of sin and turning of oneself toward the Gospel, is a call that can radically break into our lives at any moment. Whether that call comes to us “early in the morning” or in the third, sixth, ninth, or eleventh hour of our lives, makes little difference in the eyes of the Master. “You go into the vineyard too.” God’s will for us is not simply that we “show up early”, but that while light remains, we do not stand idle, but enter into the vineyard of the kingdom of heaven to labor and to receive our wage.
God’s mercy is further emphasized by the words of the Prophet in today’s Lesson. “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” This should be of great encouragement to us to not abandon hope of mercy and forgiveness of sins while we live, because pardon and mercy are the will of God for us. He can and does wash away our transgressions right up until the evening of our lives.
However, we should also take a warning from the Lesson and the Gospel. Isaiah says that we ought to seek the Lord while he may be found and while he is near, for he will not always be so. While the master of the vineyard seeks workers to go in and labor for him throughout the whole day, once night begins to fall, the work stops and so does the hiring. Instead, at that time everyone receives the wage promised him by the householder, but only if he has consented to enter the vineyard, even though it be for just one hour. We have only the day of this life to enter into the Lord’s vineyard, and unlike with the physical sun, we know neither the day nor the hour when the sun of our lives may set. So we must not stand idle, but listen attentively to the summons of the master to enter into his vineyard!
Nor should we who are Christians congratulate ourselves on already having responded to the summons of the vineyard master and consider that there is nothing left to do. For to enter the vineyard and take service with the Lord entails persevering in labor until we are called by God to receive our reward. For the Christian, this labor is the Beatitudes and the works of mercy. And if we examine ourselves honestly, we may well find that, against this measure of labor in the kingdom of heaven, we ourselves are no better than the idlers hanging around outside. “So the last will be first, and the first last.”
We should therefore strive always to “let [our] manner of life be worthy of the Gospel”, as Saint Paul puts it in today’s Epistle to the Philippians. It profits us nothing to stand idle outside the vineyard of faith and loving intimacy with Christ, unwilling or trepidacious to enter in, whether that be due to attachment to sin, discouragement at our own failings, and simple self-satisfied complacency. Rather, let us return to the Lord and respond to the summons of the Master, so that at every moment, we can confidently proclaim with Saint Paul, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”.