In today's reading of the Gospel of Matthew, we learned that God does not call everybody at the same time. Some are called early in life as the early laborers were called, having received their baptism as infants. Some were called as teenagers. Some were called during their married life and others, much later in life. And some are like the laborers who were called around five o'clock; their conversion took place at the hour. And you know, God gives His Grace according to how He perceives the work that is done, according to His standards, not according to ours. That is what the Gospel reading is about, that parable about the last hired receiving the same wages as the first hired: God sees the individual effort and rewards this effort generously. His standards are not like ours. He is God[1].
Sometimes I hear some people say, “I am not as good as him, or her.” That is wrong. We do not have the right to compare ourselves with others, positively or negatively. It is wrong for someone to say, “I am better than him.” It is also wrong to say, “I am not as good as her.” No! God has a purpose for each of us. Different plans for each one of us. Only He knows what that purpose is. Only He knows how well we fulfill that purpose. We have a bad day, not because we are feeling badly, but because we foolishly decide to go along with the crowd and behave badly. And then we become upset with ourselves because we know we are better than that, we want to follow Christ, but have not… and you know we all do this because we are human beings. St. Paul put it this way in the Letter to the Romans, I see in my members a law at war with the law of my soul, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Who has not had this experience? Who has not felt the tear of temptation?
And we cannot give up. We can never give up. And we are wrong if we compare ourselves to others. We feel we are not as good as someone else so we give up. We can’t do that either. We are each created to be unique reflections of God’s love.
We do not have the right to compare our reflection to anyone else’s. God created us for who each of us is when we do everything possible to let Him work in us. We need to do our best, to be our best, and let God take care of the rest. In the sacrament of confession I like to say, look, you do your best and if you have the misfortune to fall come here to cleanse your soul.
My brother, my sister, I know that the Sacrament of Confession is not fashionable. We need to rediscover the sacrament of Confession. The Holy Father said few weeks ago that we need the Divine Sculptor who removes the build-up of dust and trash which obscures the Image of God placed in us. Let’s do it! Let’s come to the tribunal of grace and mercy and compassion. Let’s rediscover the love of God trough the Sacrament of Reconciliation!
The last hired were paid first. He does not make a comparison between our lives and those of others. He rewards us according to the way that we live out the Grace He gives each of us. God’s ways are not the ways of humans. And thank God for that!
The Gospel ends by saying: the last will be first, and the first will be last. What beautiful words for our time! The author of the Imitation of Christ expressed a similar thought in the following way: «Do not believe yourself better than others, for fear that God, who knows the inner man, might see you as the worst of all. Have no vanity in your good works, for the judgments of God are quite different from those of men, and he often condemns what they approve. If you recognize in yourself a few good qualities, believe that others have better ones; and by this means you will preserve your humility. You will lose nothing by placing yourself below others; you will lose all if your prefer yourself to even one other»[2].
May the Most Blessed Virgin Mary intercede for us and prepare our heart to receive the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings! Through Her, with Her, and for Her, may we be but a single heart and a single soul in Jesus! Amen! ■
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