Sunday, Sept. 21, is the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

 

Mass Readings

Isaiah 55:6-9; Psalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18; Philippians 1:20-24, 27; Matthew 20:1-16

 

Our Take

In today’s Gospel, Christ tells the story of the laborers who each receive the same pay regardless of when they started work. The laborers in the story and we who read about them have the same question: How can that possibly be fair?

Here is the quick answer: Because each laborer did little, and the pay for each was a mansion. But that will require some explanation.

We are accustomed to hearing this Gospel and thinking about wages the way we experience them on earth. We work for eight hours; we get paid for eight hours. But when we apply the parable to the spiritual life, we need to think about it totally differently.

As the first reading from Isaiah points out: “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.”

For one, the work we do for our earthly employer contributes to our employer’s livelihood. In our spiritual life, the work we do for God contributes to us, not him.

“We can have merit in God’s sight only because of God’s free plan to associate man with the work of his grace,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2025). “Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God and secondly to man’s collaboration. Man’s merit is due to God.”

For another, the wages we are given for God’s work are far above what we get paid for earthly work.

The heavenly wages are so great that St. Paul has to admit that he longs for death, because it brings heaven: “For to me, life is Christ, and death is gain. … I do not know which I shall choose. I am caught between the two. I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better. Yet that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for your benefit.”

Paul wants to keep working in Christ in order to spread the faith on earth — but he also wants the wages that follow in heaven.

What are those wages? In the Douay-Rheims version of the Gospel of John (and the King James version also) Jesus says, “In my Father’s house, there are many mansions.” If we are tempted to think of these “dwelling places” as something strange and ethereal, our faith tells us not to worry.

God will make “new heavens and a new earth,” says the Book of Revelation. Heaven will be a renewal of the world we know, not an alien world where we are foreigners.

Says Revelation: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

That is a fine wage, no matter how much we have worked.

But we will have to do the work to earn the wage. While what we do we do in Christ, the parable is clear that idlers are not given the wage.

So get to work: Help the poor; participate in the parish; serve your family and neighbors. It is never too late to start.

Tom and April Hoopes write from

Atchison, Kansas, where Tom is

writer in residence at

Benedictine College.