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Will you be envious because I am good?: Commentary Fr. Jorge Miró
Gospel commentary Sunday 24 September 2023
Fr. Jorge Miró shares with the readers of Exaudi his commentary on today’s Gospel for 24 September 2023, entitled “Are you going to envy me because I am good?
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The Word of God that we proclaim today presents us with a disconcerting parable: that of the labourers in the vineyard. The central message is contained in the Lord’s reply: “Are you envious because I am good?
The owner of the vineyard, at different times of the day, calls labourers to work in his vineyard. And in the evening he gives them all the same wage: a denarius, provoking the protest of those of the first hour. This denarius represents eternal life, a gift that God reserves for all.
The parable raises the theme of the gratuitousness of God’s love and salvation. The Gospel speaks to us of a “logic” that is different from the logic of the world: the last will be first, and the first will be last. It is the “logic” of God’s heart. In the first reading, we heard: My plans are not your plans, your ways are not my ways.
It is an invitation to conversion, to move from the logic of merit to the world of gratuitousness, which is the secret of the Kingdom of God. Everything is gift, everything is grace.
In being a Christian, everything is a gift from the Lord, who loves you; everything is grace that precedes man, everything is a work that the Lord, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, has to do in you. And that you have to accept. That seems little; but it is not little.
It is to recognise that all that you have and all that you are, you have received freely, and that the real protagonist is not you, but the Lord. It is to recognise that God’s method is humility: you get to heaven by descending.
As the Second Vatican Council says: “The followers of Christ have been called by God and justified in the Lord Jesus, not by their own merits, but by his gracious plan. Baptism and faith have made them truly sons of God, they share in the divine nature and are therefore truly holy. They must therefore, with God’s grace, preserve and bring to fullness in their lives the holiness they have received” (LG 40).
But God always respects your freedom and asks you to accept this gift and to live the demands it entails; he asks you to allow yourself to be transformed by the Holy Spirit, adjusting your will to God’s will.
Then you will not be filled with the envy of a resentful person, but with the gratitude of a lover who has received more than he could have hoped for.
Come, Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 11:13).
Exaudi Staff
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