Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard Wednesday of week 20 in Ordinary Time
Gospel of Matthew 20:1-16 Reflection:
Sometimes life appears to be unfair when people are better off than we are or when something good happens to someone when at the same time I feel that something bad has happened to me. Perhaps we are sick while others around us are well or perhaps we feel that we are not getting a fair crack of the whip at work. Human nature was the same at the time of Jesus.
Jesus told a parable which can be understood as God’s answer to this problem and it is something that we find very difficult to understand, in fact we can’t grasp the full meaning of it at all. It is a parable about a man hiring people to do a day’s work. He hires some in the morning, some at noon, some in the afternoon and some when there is only an hour to go. At the end of the day he pays everyone the same.
It is like that with life. Some people appear to get it good all the time, others make it mid-life and some never seem to have life sorted. But in the end, if we all hold to what Jesus teaches, everything works out fine. God’s love heals us of all our hurts.
This is the wonderful thing about God, he can make us whole after all the hurts of this life. We have no concept how God can heal murder victims, people who die of starvation or those who have lived lives of misery and yet he can, and he can enable those people to enjoy heavenly bliss just like the greatest saints.
This is where we always come up against it with God: we have no idea how to heal ourselves let alone anyone else, but God can heal in an instant. The classic example of this is St Paul, a man consumed with hate and with evil in his heart, he even approved of the stoning of Stephen. In an instant Jesus changed him.
Jesus will heal us all; his very look gazing into our hearts shall free us from all our pain and shame. We have to prepare ourselves for this moment, making ourselves ready to receive God’s love and healing.
This is a lifetime’s work, we may as well begin today!
Gospel of Matthew 20:1-16 Reflection:
Sometimes life appears to be unfair when people are better off than we are or when something good happens to someone when at the same time I feel that something bad has happened to me. Perhaps we are sick while others around us are well or perhaps we feel that we are not getting a fair crack of the whip at work. Human nature was the same at the time of Jesus.
Jesus told a parable which can be understood as God’s answer to this problem and it is something that we find very difficult to understand, in fact we can’t grasp the full meaning of it at all. It is a parable about a man hiring people to do a day’s work. He hires some in the morning, some at noon, some in the afternoon and some when there is only an hour to go. At the end of the day he pays everyone the same.
It is like that with life. Some people appear to get it good all the time, others make it mid-life and some never seem to have life sorted. But in the end, if we all hold to what Jesus teaches, everything works out fine. God’s love heals us of all our hurts.
This is the wonderful thing about God, he can make us whole after all the hurts of this life. We have no concept how God can heal murder victims, people who die of starvation or those who have lived lives of misery and yet he can, and he can enable those people to enjoy heavenly bliss just like the greatest saints.
This is where we always come up against it with God: we have no idea how to heal ourselves let alone anyone else, but God can heal in an instant. The classic example of this is St Paul, a man consumed with hate and with evil in his heart, he even approved of the stoning of Stephen. In an instant Jesus changed him.
Jesus will heal us all; his very look gazing into our hearts shall free us from all our pain and shame. We have to prepare ourselves for this moment, making ourselves ready to receive God’s love and healing.
This is a lifetime’s work, we may as well begin today!
