My Dear People, 

In today’s reading of Isaiah, people are called to conversion. In order to return to their homeland, they must return to God and “seek” him.  The Lord who allows himself to be found and who does not judge in the way men do, is willing and able to grant forgiveness. In other words, the call to repentance is grounded in the goodness of God who “will abundantly pardon.”  Man, for his part, should grasp the opportunity that God offers him.  So, the words in this passage are a constant encouragement to begin the pursuit of virtue: To be converted means to ask for forgiveness. Seek out the strength of God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and thus begin advancing step by step every day, learning to overcome ourselves,  win the spiritual battles that we face, and to give of ourselves joyfully, ‘for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7). 

In the Gospel the chapter opens with a parable that brings yet another mystery of the kingdom of Heaven into focus. Interpreters differ about the main thrust of the parable. For some, it is a story about the final judgment, when the position of the first and last will be revealed. For others, it summarizes the history of salvation, in which Israel served the Lord for many generations and the Gentiles came to the faith only in the messianic age. Still others read the parable as a lesson about conversion at various stages of life. All these interpretations have something to offer. As we read it, Jesus primarily intends to recount the historical drama of salvation as it climaxes with Gentiles being placed on equal footing with Jews as fellow members of the people of God. 

The setting of the parable alternates between a vineyard estate and a village marketplace. The image of a vineyard tended by a landowner is a traditional motif from the Old Testament that depicts the Lord cultivating and caring for his people. Here the owner of the estate heads out to the marketplace at dawn to hire teams of laborers.  The timeframe of the parable stretches across a traditional workday from sunrise to sunset. 

The landowner contracts with workers for the usual daily wage. The Greek text refers to a Roman silver coin called a denarius. This was the going rate in Palestine for a single day of manual labor. Wages had to be paid out on a daily basis because the Torah requires that hired help be given their earnings by sundown at the end of each workday (Deut. 24:14-15).

The landowner went to the marketplace at different times of  the day and he hired workers to go to the vineyard, including workers who went at 5 pm, one hour before the end of the workday. At the end of the day the Landowner began to pay the workers. The ones who worked an hour first received their daily wage, the same amount as those who had worked a full day. This passage  indicates that those who come late to be saved, at the last hour or the final hour of their lives, will be saved just like the people who have been at it their whole lives. This is to show the generosity of God. The group who came last did not have to earn the full daily wage-- it was given to them anyway. All they had to do was show up and they received the full benefit. This is to show God’s goodness and grace. God is willing to give salvation even to the individual who comes to repentance at the last hour of his life. God is generous, and this individual who did not do anything for his salvation his whole life receives the same salvation as all the others. The message concentrates on the generosity and the abundance of God’s favor. His grace is so abundant that salvation is not something we earn, but is dependent on God’s generosity. 

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente