From the Pastor's Desk

RE-OPENING THE CHURCH

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary time

Today’s readings are all about our sense of justice and the extravagant grace of a merciful God. While God is both just and merciful, God’s mercy often seems, in our view, to override His justice, as God pardons us unconditionally and rewards us generously by opening Heaven for the Gentiles and the Jews.

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah reminds the exiles in Babylon that their God is more merciful than they are, and more forgiving. He is ready to pardon their infidelity to God, which has resulted in their exile. Their merciful God will bless them with material and spiritual blessings. Hence, Isaiah exhorts them, and us, to seek the Lord and to put aside evil ways that we may receive His mercy and forgiveness.

Today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 145) reminds us that, although “the Lord is just in all His ways,” He is at the same time (and without contradiction), “gracious and merciful.”

In the second reading, Paul offers himself as an example of total submission, aided by God’s grace, to His will. Paul is ready to live continuing his mission, or to die and join the Lord, whichever is God’s will.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us the strange parable of a landowner who hired laborers at five different times during the course of one day to work in his vineyard, but paid the same living wage for a full day’s work to all of them. This story presents God (the landlord), Whose love and generosity to all of us demonstrates the difference between God's perspective and ours. God looks at us, sees our needs and meets those needs generously and mercifully. His provisions for our spiritual lives will never run out, and when we share our blessings with others, we tap into the inexhaustible Divine supply. The parable also shows the mercy, compassion, and generosity of a gracious and forgiving God in allowing the later-called Gentiles as well the first-called Jews, His Chosen People, to enjoy the same eternal bliss of His Heavenly Kingdom