'Are you envious because I am generous?' Sunday Reflections, 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, Johann Christian Brand, 1769

Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) 

Gospel Matthew 20:1-16a (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition: Canada)  

Jesus said to his disciples:

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.  When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.  When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same.  And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’  They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’  When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.  And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner,  saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’  But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?  Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.  Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’  So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Vineyards in Languedoc-Roussillion region, France [Wikipedia]

I spent a grace-filled year in Toronto in 1981-82 doing a sabbatical at Regis College, a Jesuit school. The programme I was in was for persons with pastoral experience. Nearly all of us were priests or religious brothers and sisters, with one or two laypersons. One of the graces of that year was making new friends. 

Five or six of us men used to go for an hour's brisk walk almost every night after supper. One of them was Brother Luke Pearson FMS, a member of the Marist Brothers of the Schools, from New Jersey whose father was a Scottish Presbyterian and his mother an Irish Catholic. Brother Luke identified with his mother in terms of his faith but considered himself Scottish rather than Irish, even though he was American. He would surely have been following this week's referendum in Scotland, which has resulted in the people of that country opting to stay in the United Kingdom.

In the 1990s Brother Luke came to be a member of the staff at the Marist Asia-Pacific Center in Marikina City, part of the urban sprawl that is Metro Manila, where junior professed brothers from the region have ongoing formation. Sadly, he later died of cancer.

At the end of our academic year most of us went to Loyola House in Guelph, Ontario, for its 40-day Spiritual Exercises Institute, which includes a retreat of 30 days. Many of the retreatants were persons we hadn't met before. We got to know them a little during the preparatory days before we moved into the total silence of the 30-day retreat, apart from three separate 'repose days' when we were off silence from after breakfast until late afternoon.

I began to notice as each repose day came about that I was finding it harder to remember who had been on the nine-month programme in Toronto and who hadn't. In the silence we were gradually becoming a real community, even though after leaving most of us would never meet each other again.

At the beginning I saw myself and my companions from the Regis College programme as my core group who had borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat, as it were, while the others were those hired about five o’clock.

Unlike the parable, there was no sense of resentment but rather a sense of joy. We were all receiving an abundance of the Lord's unbounded generosity with the graces he was showering on each of us, and on all of us as a community growing in the silence of prayer. 

And my friendship with Brother Luke had grown deeper during that silence.

I recalled all of this while reflecting on and praying with today's Gospel. There's a great freedom in being able to acknowledge and to rejoice in the gifts that God has given others that may be different from those he has given me. When I can do that I will have a sense of gratitude to God not only for the gifts that others have but for those that I have. 

I remember reading an obituary of a Columban who had spent 53 years in Japan and who died in Ireland, Fr Bede Cleary. He was described as a happy, enthusiastic, committed missionary and that people were touched by his friendliness, hospitality and selfless dedication. Among other things, he was  involved with other Christians in bringing on pilgrimages of reconciliation to Japan former prisoners of war from Britain and other places who had suffered cruelly from Japanese soldiers during World War II and who carried bitterness and hatred in their hearts. One of the things that had led to these pilgrimages ws the discovery that young Japanese, born long after the War, were tending the graves of POWs who had died in Japan.

But what I remember most from the obituary written by another Columban in Japan, Fr Eamonn Horgan, was his description of three of the shortest books you could find in a library. One was How to Maintain a Car by Fr Bede Cleary. Father Bede was truly loved by his fellow Columbans as well as by the Japanese people he so faithfully served. But the Columbans in Japan could also see clearly that there were certain gifts he lacked! 

Being able to laugh at what we and others lack while recognizing and thanking God for the many gifts each has is one of the graces that God wants each of us to receive.

If we are truly grateful to God for everything that he has given us, and for what he has given others that we may not have, when we come to receive the usual daily wage, which, if we follow his will, will be eternal life, we won't provoke him to ask, Are you envious because I am generous?

Antiphona ad introitum     Entrance antiphon

Salus populi ego sum, dicit Dominus.

I am the salvation of the people says the Lord.

De quacumque tribulatione clamaverint ad me,

Should they cry to me in any distress,

exaudiam eos, et ero illorum Dominus in perpetuum.

I will hear them, and I will be their Lord for ever.

Ps. 77 [78]:1. Attendite, popule meus, legem meam:

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;

inclinate aurem vestram in verba oris mei. 

incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

Gloria Patri, et Filio et Spiritui Sancto;
Glory to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit;
sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, in saecula saecolurm. Amen.
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen

Salus populi ego sum, dicit Dominus.

I am the salvation of the people says the Lord.

De quacumque tribulatione clamaverint ad me,

Should they cry to me in any distress,

exaudiam eos, et ero illorum Dominus in perpetuum.

I will hear them, and I will be their Lord for ever.

The text above in bold, in Latin and English, is used in Mass in the Ordinary Form. That and the rest is used in the Mass in the Extraordinary Form on the 19th Sunday After Pentecost.

Visit of Pope Francis to Tirana, Albania, 21 September

Logo for Apostolic Journey of Pope Francis to Tirana, Albania

Terminal of Tirana International Airport Nënë Tereza (Mother Teresa)

Aeroporti Ndërkombëtar i Tiranës Nënë Tereza (Albanian) [Wikipedia]

Catholics and other people of faith were cruellly persecuted between 1946 and 1997

The Our Father in Albanian

Ati ynë, që je në qiell, 

u shenjtëroftë emri yt, 

ardhtë mbretëria jote, 

u bëftë vullnesa jote si në qiell ashtu në tokë.

Bukën tonë të përditshme na e jep sot; 

na i fal fajet tona, si i falim ne fajtorët tanë; 

e mos na lër të biem në tundim, 

por na liro nga i keqi.

The Pope will celebrate Mass in Latin, with responses, readings and part of Eucharistic Prayer III in Albanian, in Mother Teresa Square, Tirana. Blessed Mother Teresa, born in Skopje, now the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, was an ethnic Albanian.

Of Albania's 3,000,000 people 59 percent are Muslims, ten percent Catholics and seven percent Orthodox Christians. Catholics are a majority in northwestern Albania.

May the Calvary and Resurrection of the Christians of Albania give heart to the Christians of Iraq and Syria, as we continue to pray for them. Their Calvary, unlike that of the Christians of Albania who couldn't leave their country, is one of exile, being forced to leave the place where their ancestors have lived and died and celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for 2,000 years but where it cannot be celebrated any more.

Plaque dedicated to Mother Teresa, Wenceslas Square, Olomouc, Czech Republic [Wikipedia]

Tirana [Wikipedia]

'Your faith has saved you': 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C, 10 October 2010

Christ healing a leper, sketch by Rembrandt, drawn c. 1657-1660.

Readings


New American Bible (Philippines, USA)

Jerusalem Bible (Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, Scotland)

Gospel (Luke 17:11-19, NAB)

As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"

And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests."

As they were going they were cleansed.

And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.

Jesus said in reply,
"Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?"

Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you."

St Damien de Veuster (1840-1889)



When I was in kindergarten in Dublin one of the first holy persons I learned about was Father Damien of Molokai, now St Damien. Sister Stanislaus, the Irish Sister of Charity who was the principal of the boy's kindergarten and who prepared us for our First Holy Communion in 1950, was forever telling us about this great priest.


A few months after my First Holy Communion Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity were formally established. She had spent a few months in Dublin, 1928-29, as a postulant with the Loreto Sisters and it was they who sent her to India where she was a member of that congregation till she got permission to found the Missionaries of Charity.

Both St Damien and Blessed Mother Teresa exemplified very powerfully the mission of Jesus to those who are on the margins of or outside society. Both gave themselves at great cost. For St Damien it was isolation and then finding that he had acquired leprosy. For Blessed Mother Teresa, as we know now, there was deep spiritual anguish. Part of the cost to Jesus himself in today's gospel was the lack of gratitude of nine of the ten whom he had healed and enabled to be fully part of society again.

The Church continues to bring the healing power of Jesus to people who have nothing or who are ostracised.

The gospel too evokes the words of St Paul: 'Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you' (1Thess 5:17) and 'always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father' (Eph 5:20). I remember an incident outside a retreat house in Cebu in the morning of Holy Thursday 1990. A woman and her daughter, aged about 13, asked me for money. I made an excuse that I was only visiting. Later I saw them sitting on the steps of the retreat house, the daughter, clearly tired, with her head on her mother's shoulder. When I was leaving I gave them enough to buy a meal. The girl looked at me with the most beautiful smile I have ever seen and said in Visayan 'Salamat sa Ginoo!' 'Thanks to the Lord!' she wasn't thanking me but inviting me to thank the Lord with her and her mother. This young girl had the same deep sense of gratitude as the Samaritan leper had.

Blessed Mother Teresa (1910-1997)



Fr Thomas Rosica CSB writes: 'Thankfulness is much more than saying "Thank you" because we have to. It is a way to experience the world, to perceive and to be surprised. Thankfulness is having open eyes and a short distance between the eyes and the heart. What are the signs of grateful people? Tears are always wiped away from the eyes of those who are thankful. The courage to thank, to see the gifts and experiences of this world all together as a gift, changes not only the person who gains this insight. It also changes the environment, the world, and those who surround that person. Grateful hearts are the hallmark of authentic Christians. Those who possess the virtue of gratitude are truly rich. They not only know how richly they have been blessed, but they continuously remember that all good things come from God.'


You can read the full text of his reflections on the readings for this Sunday here.