{"id":1459,"date":"2014-09-21T14:30:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-21T18:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2014-09-21T14:30:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-21T18:30:39","slug":"25th-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-a-homily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/25th-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-a-homily\/","title":{"rendered":"25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily"},"content":{"rendered":"

25th<\/sup> Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A<\/a>
\nIsaiah 55:6-9
\nPhilippians 1:20c-24, 27a
\nMatthew 20:1-16a
\nSeptember 21, 2014
\nThe landowner goes out and hires workers for the day and agrees to pay them the \u201cusual daily wage\u201d.\u00a0 There is nothing usual here, it\u2019s the standard practice of that day.<\/p>\n

As the day continues, the landowner keeps <\/em>going out and hiring more workers and tells them he will pay them what is \u201cjust\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day the workers who only worked a little bit are paid first and paid the full day\u2019s wage!<\/em>\u00a0 So the workers who worked the whole day expect to be paid more but they only receive the \u201cusual daily wage\u201d.<\/p>\n

They are shocked by this and I bet most of us won\u2019t be any different.\u00a0 Standard business practice is the more you work the more you get paid.<\/p>\n

The landowner looks at it differently.\u00a0 The \u201cusual daily wage\u201d is determined by what a person needs to live on.\u00a0 The workers who only worked part of the day still have the same cost of living.\u00a0 So, the landowner does not pay them based on the quantity of work they performed but their need.<\/p>\n

When we set a salary do we consider what the person needs to live on?<\/p>\n

So far I have just talked about this parable in human terms but, of course, there is a spiritual dimension.\u00a0 As I look around the congregation I see people who have been coming to church their whole lives, some intermittent attenders, and some who just became part of our Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

Do people who have been Catholic their whole lives get a better place in Heaven?<\/p>\n

There was a story of a woman who had been a faithful Catholic all her live.\u00a0 Her husband never went to church much but had a deathbed conversion.\u00a0 Shortly after his death, she was talking to her priest.\u00a0 Her priest sensed something was troubling her and asked her what was troubling her.<\/p>\n

She said that while she was happy that her husband had his deathbed conversion and would be in Heaven, she found it troubling that she had worked hard all her life to be faithful while her husband didn\u2019t live so well but because in the end he opened his heart, he would be in Heaven.<\/p>\n

It is what is in our hearts at the end that determines if we are welcomed into Heaven, not the length of time we believed.<\/p>\n

This could lead one to say \u2018I\u2019m going to live a fun life and when I sense my end is near, then I will go to church and turn my heart to Jesus.\u2019<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t work that way.\u00a0 For one thing, we don\u2019t know when our end will be so, as Isaiah says, we must seek the Lord while he is near.\u00a0 The other thing here is that if we think this way, I don\u2019t know if we would really ever truly turn our hearts to Jesus.\u00a0 We might say we believe but will we really?\u00a0 If we believe, we will work to follow Jesus today.<\/em><\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t easy to follow Jesus.\u00a0 Evil tempts us.\u00a0 That\u2019s why Jesus died on the Cross, so that our sins might be forgiven.\u00a0 Jesus gives us the Sacrament of Reconciliation for us to know his forgiveness.\u00a0 What do we need to do differently today<\/em> to follow Jesus?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A Isaiah 55:6-9 Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a Matthew 20:1-16a September 21, 2014 The landowner goes out and hires workers for the day and agrees to pay them the \u201cusual daily wage\u201d.\u00a0 There is nothing usual here, it\u2019s the standard practice of that day. As the day continues, the landowner keeps …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-nx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1460,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/1460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}