“Your ways are not my ways”, says God in Isaiah, and the parable of Jesus sheds light on the distance between our way of thinking and that of God. The workers of the first hour are scandalized by the boss who gives all the same salary, even to those who have worked only an hour. Two traits of his behavior stand out. The first: he chooses those whom others discard. “Nobody has employed us” those he meets at the eleventh hour tell him. This master also offers them a chance. Even that one hour of work is important to him because the ones nobody has chosen are important. However, what is most scandalous is that he gives everyone the same pay. He does so because we are envious. Envy is the result of a sick eye, which does not see well. What we do not see is that the real profit we receive by working in the vineyard is not the wage of the employee (which, however, is not denied), but the possibility that we are offered, as children, to come to enjoy the same feeling of the Father, qualified with feelings of gratuitousness and goodness. The real gain is that of which Paul wrote to the Philippians: “for me to live is Christ”. Becoming like Jesus, living in him the sentiments of the Son who rejoices in the Father’s goodness: this is the gain we receive by working in the Lord’s vineyard.

Commentary by Comunità di Dumenza

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey