That not always understandable game of the first and the last in the Lord
Homiletic of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos
THAT NOT ALWAYS UNDERSTANDABLE GAME OF THE FIRST AND THE LAST IN THE LORD
«A good part of my moral perversion is due to the fact that my father did not allow me to become Catholic. The artistic aspect of the Church and the fragrance of its teachings would have healed me of my degenerations. I intend to welcome you as soon as possible.".
Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.
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Dear readers of the Island of Patmos,
there are conversion stories that help us understand the beauty of being Catholic, leading us to understand the meaning of becoming workers in the Lord's vineyard. God calls us at any moment of life: as children, as adults and even at the point of death. Not many know that one of these workers in the vineyard was Oscar Wilde who converted to Catholicism late in life, being baptized and receiving the viaticum. The Irish author declared to the newspaper a few days before his death Daily Chronicle:
«A good part of my moral perversion is due to the fact that my father did not allow me to become Catholic. The artistic aspect of the Church and the fragrance of its teachings would have healed me of my degenerations. I intend to welcome you as soon as possible.".
With the parable of the workers of the last hour contained in today's Gospel Jesus comes to teach us this. Everyone, in the great mystery of God's love, we are called and He knows the day and hour of our response. Jesus then tells a parable that can be "annoying" at first. Because we find workers who are hired at the beginning of the day and others only at the last hour. However, the workers' boss responded harshly to those who had arrived there to protest:
«I also want to give to the latter as much as to you: I can't do what I want with my things? Or you're jealous because I'm good? So the last will be first and the first, last".
In symbolic narration, that master is precisely God who has a different concept of first and last than ours. Effectively, Jesus' phrase about the last and the first has been evoked at length, because it is located outside the context of the parable. It gave, so, announces with beautiful and shocking news: He turns our human parameters upside down: we are all called to love, to make ourselves holy and to sanctify others. Each of us is a worker in the vineyard, that is, in the Catholic Church, according to talents and gifts that He himself has offered us.
The final reward will then be the same for everyone: his eternal friendship and companionship in Heaven. So, there is no different "retirement" method for the worker in the vineyard. The martyred catechumen child, the great charity worker, the cursed poet converted in old age, we all receive Eternal Life in God as our final goal. The great mystery of God to be welcomed is this: God asks us for a free love that does not demand or demand, but it offers itself spontaneously. Because the first to offer himself without expecting anything in return was Jesus on the cross.
It is simply up to us to welcome the call and to put a little’ of good will. God himself with his grace will accompany us in our being active and fruitful winemakers for God and others. The difference in time between call and response to God's love, it doesn't take anything away from our happiness, whether we respond as children or as adults, if our response is authentic, meditated and true in God it is always a source of maximum joy for us. So, being first in God is not being first in the logic of the world. Instead, it means acting with humility in the vocational state we are in, decentralizing our selfishness and superficiality, placing the Lord at the centre: in that decentralization, He will give us maximum glory and satisfaction.
We ask the Lord to become good like Him, internalizing humility and willingness to welcome a greater Project of Love, to become day after day believing and credible witnesses of endless Mercy.
Amen!
Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 24 September 2023
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