Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time at Mississippi Abbey
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Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time at Mississippi Abbey
[Scripture Readings: Is 55:6-9; Phil 1:20c-27; Mt 20:1-16a ]
Now that is an interesting question! The vineyard owner was generous to those who worked the least number of hours, yet those who worked the most number received the wages as agreed … the same wages as the last hired. From the perspective of the secular world one can understand the irritation of the first hired. But Jesus tells us that from the perspective of God, the irritation is really envy. This is an important teaching of His because it reveals something very fundamental about human nature: we resist inferiority and believe we deserve better than we're getting.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were given abundantly. They could eat of every tree in the garden…EXCEPT one. The serpent convinced them that because of the one exception the gift of all the others was not a sign of generosity, but of stinginess … and they deserved better.
Adam and Eve and the first-hired laborers had a disease of perception. They could not see the abundance, but instead wanted “more.” 
They could not comprehend the word “enough.” They could not see that the issue was not one of proportion.
The issue was simply that “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” In other words, the Creator is superior to the creature and decides what the creature needs to fulfill its purpose.
They had a disease of perception; we perceive according to our desire. We were made to desire God, but that desire was perverted when Adam and Eve desired to be like God. They desired to be more than was their nature. They wanted to avoid an experience of inferiority.
This has been handed down to us. Inferiority and dessert, the active ingredients in envy, prevent us from letting God design our happiness. Today, with the vineyard workers, Jesus is teaching us that our happiness does not lie in getting.
It is in giving rather than getting that God's thoughts and ways are above ours.
Jesus is showing us in today's parable that we can turn to a loving God Who allocates gifts abundantly and wisely … according to His plan for the part each of us is to play in the common good. Knowing this we can choose admiration over envy. Admiration is like a new pair of glasses; it corrects our perception. We don't have to understand God's ways in order to admire them.
St. Aelred emphasized admiration and contribution as contrary to envy in a sermon to his monks for the feast of St. Benedict. He says: “No one should envy his brother because of some grace, as if it were exclusively his. What he has is for the good of all and what his brother has is also for his good. Almighty God causes each person to need the other and to have in the other what he does not possess in himself. Thus humility is preserved, charity increased, and unity recognized. Therefore each belongs to all and all belongs to each.”
St. Aelred has said it well. We need not organize our lives around the avoidance of inferiority. 
The prophet Isaiah assures us that we have the love we crave. He says: “Do not fear, for I am the Lord, your God. I have redeemed you, I have called you by name and you are mine … you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you” (43:1-4).
It has been said that “A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy: the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered; and the smile that lights on a newborn baby and assures it of a mother's love.”
Jesus tells us today that we all need that kind of love … and we all have it.