Ave Maria!
Septuagesima Sunday—8 February
AD 2009
On Inequity
“These last have worked but one hour, and
Thou hast made them equal to us that have borne the burden of the day and its
heat.”
This morning's Gospel is one of few
which, when we hear them, we are tempted to side with the “villain” of the
story. Any of us that have gone out and worked—particularly hard,
physical work—tend to side with the men who worked all day, and to agree that
they should be paid more than those that came along only during the last hour or
two. The story seems to violate our notion of justice. We are
tempted, again, to say that the householders generosity is a bit
misdirected—if anything, a bonus might have been given to the longer term
workers.
But, like most of the Gospel parables,
our Lord is telling the story to make a point of more enduring importance; to
dramatize ideas of a more long term concern. In fact there are several
lessons which we can learn from the parable at hand.
First of all, the words which end the
parable are a clue to its meaning: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
Particularly when we put the parable in the perspective of the rest of Saint
Matthew's Gospel, we see that our Lord is talking about the relationship of Jews
and Gentiles (non-Jews). Even though the Jews were God’s chosen people;
Even though they had spent centuries serving God; Even though they had
made the forty year journey through the desert to the promised land; Jesus
knew that, ultimately, many would reject Him in the end, and would even crucify
Him. Many of them had, so to speak, “borne the heat of the day,” but
would receive no reward.
Saint Paul is a little cryptic at the
end of the Epistle—he is describing the Exodus, the forty year journey of the
Jews out of Egypt. God furnished them with the necessities of life and
protected them from their enemies—but if you read the story in the Old
Testament, you will find that Paul made an understatement: “With most of
them God was not well pleased.”
He gave them every benefit, but they did not respond with obedience and fidelity
to Him.
Our Lord is also telling us that there
are inequities in this life. Some of us are short, and some of us are
tall. Some of us are richer, some of us are poorer. Some are
beautiful, some are down right ugly. And our Lord is telling us that this
situation isn't going to change. And we are probably wasting our prayers,
if we are asking God to make us taller, smarter, richer, or more pretty.
But He is also telling us that those who
are more favorably endowed are not necessarily His chosen people. Indeed,
it often seems to work the other way around -- Those who have things easy in
this life seem to be the ones who give comparatively little in return to God.
Often, what we perceive as a material gift is really just a handicap in
disguise. Just ask a tall person about the lower-back pain they have from
living among smaller people!
Overly attractive appearance can lead to
unchastity and incontinence. Great intellect—the intellectuals are
forever inventing new heresies, and are often unable to live in the world of
practical reality. (Communism is dead most everywhere except in the
universities, the media, and the upper circles of government.) Great
wealth often breeds a lack of charity, and contempt for the poor, perhaps even
an insatiable form of greed. And all of these material endowments present
the danger of looking down at others, as though we were somehow better than
they—the danger of losing all of our humility.
And, our Lord is telling us that we may
be surprised when we get to heaven and see who else is there—and who isn't.
We, who are religious, may well find that those people who had such a hard time
with prayer; that those people who seemed to fidget all the time during
Mass; that those people who had such a hard time keeping the Commandments;
that those people who had difficulty in life, yet persevered anyway; that
many of these people not only made it there to heaven—but that they received
even greater rewards than those who had things easy in life.
Our Lord wants us to understand that,
after all, there is justice. And that the justice and the generosity of
God are closely united; like the two sides of the same coin.
This scheme of Divine Justice and Mercy
is one of the main reasons why we have this period of Septuagesima and then
Lent. We need to be sure that we are using our earthly gifts
wisely—using them for our salvation—not allowing them to draw us down to
perdition.
We need to be sure that we don't give up
the race that St. Paul spoke to us about this morning, when we are only half
finished—That we are not like the chosen people, who spent centuries in God's
service, only to quit their work, so to speak, “just before payday.”
We need to be sure that we bring
ourselves “under subjection, lest having preached to others, we ourselves
should be lost.” Today we begin to prepare for Lent. We will have
more to say about Lent in the next week or two, but for today, let it suffice to
say that it should be a period of serious prayer in preparation for the Feast of
our Lord’s resurrection. We always associate Lent with fasting and
abstinence. It is important to recognize that this fasting is not intended
to help us lose the weight we need to lose, or to break the habit of smoking, or
whatever. Those things may be side benefits, but the real purpose is to do
what Saint Paul urges today, bring ourselves “under subjection”—learning
to give up innocent pleasures so that we make ourselves able to avoid the less
innocent pleasures that may tempt us in the future.
These are awesome words that our Lord
speaks to us today: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
Together with the good Saint Paul we ought to take advantage of this coming Lent
to “win the prize” and insure that we are counted among the “few that are
chosen.”
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