Wednesday,
August 22, 2018
20th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Ezk 34:1-11
Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16
This story throws light on the kingdom of heaven. A landowner went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay the workers a salary of a silver coin for the day, and sent them to his vineyard.
He went out again at about nine in the morning, and seeing others idle in the square, he said to them:
‘You, too, go to my vineyard and I will pay you what is just.’ So they went.
The owner went out at midday and again at three in the afternoon, and he did the same. Finally he went out at the last working hour—it was the eleventh—and he saw others standing there. So he said to them:
‘Why do you stay idle the whole day?’ They answered: ‘Because no one has hired us.’ The master said: ‘Go and work in my vine yard.’
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager: ‘Call the workers and pay them their wage, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ Those who had come to work at the eleventh hour turned up and were given a denarius each (a silver coin). When it was the turn of the first, they thought they would receive more. But they, too, received a denarius each. So, on receiving it, they began to grumble against the landowner.
They said: ‘These last hardly worked an hour, yet you have treated them the same as us who have endured the day’s burden and heat.’ The owner said to one of them: ‘Friend, I have not been unjust to you. Did we not agree on a denarius a day? So take what is yours and go. I want to give to the last the same as I give to you. Don’t I have the right to do as I please with my money? Why are you envious when I am kind?’So will it be: the last will be first, the first will be last.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Justice demands that those who work more should receive more compensation. Surprisingly today’s Gospel parable seems to promote the contrary. In using this parable did Jesus intend to violate this principle? No he did not. When the master of the parable perfected an agreement with the first batch of laborers as to their hours of work and the corresponding pay, this became the law between them. It couldn’t be made subject to how the master will deal with the second batch. When he gave more to the latter, he was exercising his right to dispose of his money.
The controversy that the parable stirred among Jesus’ listeners served to emphasize the generosity of God. In matters of salvation God tempers justice with compassion. He can extend lavish mercy towards “spiritual late-comers”, without being unjust towards those who persevere in uprightness. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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