20 September 2020
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.”
What are our thoughts and ways? And how do they compare to God’s?
Today’s gospel helps to answer these questions. The laborers represent our thoughts and our ways. We break our backs to make a living, and we expect compensation for the amount of work that we’ve done. It’s only fair! If someone who has done less gets the same compensation that we do, then we feel cheated.
This dynamic, so common in our world, can often be translated into the spiritual life: “Being a good Christian is hard work, but God will compensate me with eternal bliss in Heaven!” That’s the mentality. How unfair it seems then when someone who has lived a careless life away from God has a moment of conversion in their last years or on their deathbed and receives the exact same reward.
Oh how far are our thoughts and ways from God’s if we think like this.
Yes, being a faithful witness to Christ is challenging at times. But if we truly turn ourselves over to him, we will not be laboring alone. He will be with us, in us, making our ways his ways. The love and mercy that we experience in our hearts will make us want to share it with all, and it will make us want everyone to have just as much of it as we do, no matter when they join the fold.
Like St. Paul, we will be happy to labor fruitfully with Christ for the benefit of our neighbors.