25th Sunday - Fr. Leo
I’ll be honest, if I worked for the landowner in today’s gospel, I wouldn’t show up to work until later in the day. Why work all day in the heat for what another will receive for working a mere hour?
Eventually, everyone would do the same. Not much would get done and everyone would be more miserable for it. Socialism moves in this direction when we think we should provide at the tax payers expense for those who learn to be helpless and feel entitled. Where do people think this money comes from? Besides, the dollars used lose value as we print more and grow our inflation. This is a slippery slope in one direction.
So, if this is not the meaning of the parable, what is?
On a spiritual plain the work of the spirit is beyond time. Someone on their death bed may be gifted, if willing, with a tremendous experience of redemption. Even if they only turned to God in their last hour. And someone else who is devout all their life may become angry in that hour because they are suffering and not experiencing redemption in their dying. Also, in either case we will never know what good things the Spirit has accomplished. We can’t judge.
What I like about the landowner is that he sees the laborers as people with needs that he chooses to make his own. They aren’t just the workforce that he can employ for his own profit. The landowner has a balance between living for things and living for people. This prayerful reflection would be good in the midst of social and economic strife. Do you think such a prayer would work at the negotiation table between unions and corporate executives?