Father Chas Canoy
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God’s generosity is not something we earn—it is a gift we are invited to receive and share. This homily explores the workers in the vineyard, our place in God’s family, and the call to make our homes living examples of the domestic Church.
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All right, today’s parable rubs a number of folks the wrong way. That’s not fair. All right.
It’s often what people think. So let’s take a look at this fascinating parable more closely. So there’s this wealthy landowner and back in the first century Judaism, it was common for such landowners to hire day laborers who customarily would gather in a marketplace in hopes that someone might hire them for a temporary job that day.
So that was especially the case during harvest season. You know, it’s harvest. We’re about to enter into harvest time for our farmers around here.
So landowners would hire people daily to work that day. And in the end, they would get how much? One denarius, which was, you know, a Roman piece of currency back then. And that one denarius was the usual standard wage for a day’s work that the gospel mentioned.
So the landowner went out at dawn, right, probably around 6 a.m. to hire some day laborers. He returned about, again, three hours later to the same place at 9 a.m. to hire more of them, saying, hey, you two go into my vineyard and I will pay you what is just. The owner of the vineyard would do the same thing three hours later at noon and then another three hours later at 3 p.m. And surprisingly, the landowner went out towards the beginning of the last hour of work at 5 p.m. And he brings on board for that one hour of work the ones who have yet to be hired.
So when the end of the day came, which was around 6 p.m., the owner called everyone in, had the foreman do that, but he began with the guys he hired at 5 p.m., the ones who began working at the cool of the day, right? Not the ones who had worked a 12-hour shift under the full heat of the sun. What’s up with that, all right? And then those guys notice that those guys that have worked only one hour get paid one denarius, a full day’s wage for their one hour of work. So they naturally thought, wow, I mean, I guess this means we’re going to get 12 days pay because we worked a 12-hour shift.
You can imagine that they start getting nervous when they see the guys who went out at 3 p.m. and at noon also get what? One denarius. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would have probably grumbled, right, like the ones who had worked all day. But as the landowner pointed out, my friend, I’m not cheating you, right? Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? One denarius.
Am I not free to do as I wish with my money, my own money? Well, he isn’t wrong, right? I get it. We might think, yeah, I mean, I did agree for the usual day’s pay, so it’s not like he shortchanged me. And he does have the right to do whatever he wants with his own money, so the owner is not being unjust when he chooses to give the other people more.
But why? Why is he so generous with everybody else, especially those guys that he hired at the last hour? Then again, is it our business how someone chooses to spend their own money? You know, one big reason why this parable may rub people the wrong way is because they take the parable too literally and forget that this is an allegory, right, an allegory for the kingdom of heaven, that God’s ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. So let’s make sure that we understand what Jesus is not teaching with this parable, right? Jesus is not prescribing how people shouldn’t be justly and fairly compensated for the labor that they perform, number one. Number two, and pertinent to some of the crazy things that are being espoused in our times, Jesus is also not subscribing to some sort of socialistic communism where everybody gets the same amount, right? Remember that the church officially teaches that socialism is wholly incompatible with a Christian worldview, right? Even the catechism explicitly states, quote, the church has rejected the ideologies associated in modern times with communism or socialism, end of quote, paragraph 2425.
And every pope since Marxist thought became a thing has explicitly rejected it, including Pope Francis. So that’s not what this parable is about either. So what then is this parable about? And remember, it’s an allegory for the kingdom of heaven.
So it has nothing to do with money because he can’t take any of that with you. It’s about the riches of the kingdom of heaven, but it’s not money, right? So the master’s response gives us a clue about what this parable is about. Are you envious because I am generous? The parable is meant to highlight God’s generosity, his magnanimity and giving us his mercy and a share in his life.
And whether or not we are envious of the generosity he extends to other people and the gifts that they give, you know, each of us gets our own particular gifts, right? So part of the reason why coveting is one of the major Ten Commandments, thou shalt not covet because if we’re so preoccupied with the gifts everybody else has, we’re not ever thankful for what God has given us particularly, right? So there are a couple of key points that may help understand God’s generosity. Remember last Sunday’s gospel? Father Randy, it was about the servant who owed his master that huge amount, and Father Randy pointed out that the equivalent of what the servant owed would be 5,000 lifetimes of work. So it was an amount that the servant could never, ever repay.
And yet, what happened? The master forgave the entire debt. So both that parable and this Sunday’s parable are allegories for the kingdom of heaven. So it’s obvious that nobody can earn their way into heaven.
Nobody can show up at the pearly gates and say, I deserve to get into heaven, right? No, as Romans 3, 23 states, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So sharing in the eternal happiness of God is pure gift from the Father and out of his unfathomable generosity. So do we really want to question God about his generosity when each and every one of us, God willing, will enjoy the fruits of that generosity? St. Augustine points out that that one denarius that everyone in the parable receives symbolizes the gift of eternal salvation, right? All of us, God offers that gift of eternal salvation.
We can all choose to receive that gift by accepting God’s invitation to live with him and joyfully labor with him in his vineyard, working together for the harvest of souls that he so desires. So listen now, living life with God and working for the harvest of souls is a joy and a reward in itself. Yes, the work of the kingdom may be hard and toilsome at times, like the 12-hour shifts guys who, you know, like they bore the day’s burden and the heat, but helping others come to know the riches of the kingdom of heaven and life in Christ is truly fulfilling work and any additional reward pales in comparison, right? So this is why we shouldn’t be envious when others come into the work of the vineyard at the last hour.
The shared life with working, the shared life we have with the master, working in the vineyard is more blessed and fulfilling than the meaningless life without the master doing anything else. That’s what this parable is about. So the one who feels envious of the guys coming in at the last hour has to guard against the temptation to think like the, to bring another parable in, remember the parable of the prodigal son, the temptation to think like the elder son, the elder brother who mistakenly saw his relationship with his father as performative and contractual as opposed to familial and covenantal.
You know, the elder son approached his relationship with his father more like a slave than a son when the father was clear that, hey son, all that I have is yours, not just the measly goat you’re talking about. Your inheritance is everything. So do we find ourselves a little bit envious sometimes of people that come in at the last hour? What is, and if so, what is the motive behind why you are here at mass? This, this noon hour, right, because we have to, is it, is it performative or familial? We have to be careful that we don’t think that our presence here is performative, that we think we have to earn our sonship with the father when that was already given to us at baptism.
We get to celebrate a new daughter in Christ, that sonship, that daughtership is given to you at baptism freely. It’s simply whether or not we want to live out the family life with God that, you know, has its own set of obligations just like any family, right? And so we’re here today, not because we have to feel like we earn our sonship, but we’re, we’re here because that’s what families do. We spend time together as the family of God.
So if you’ve been coming more out of obligation, it’s a good place to start, but now come to the father out of desire. Run to him because of love. Be generous with him as he’s been generous with you.
So in conclusion, the first plot of the vineyard that we need to tend to is our family. And so you may have heard through the bulletin or social media that Bishop Boyer has called for a year of the family, which begins this very month. And he’s began a weekly catechetical series that features short films that showcase different families across the diocese of Lansing.
And in fact, the one this week, we showed a clip in earlier masses, but we’re not going to show a clip at this one because we get to witness a baptism, right? But I encourage every family to make the practice of viewing that family video together, right? It’ll inspire our own family life. And maybe it’s like before, doing it before grace at dinner. Maybe it’s as you prepare as a family before you leave the home to come to church on Sundays.
Pick a good time to watch that video and to put into practice some of the things that will fit your family life, right? Every family is different. But the point is to live the life of the domestic church intentionally, right? And the family that he features this week actually is our instructor for—she’s the one that’s from the Catholic Biblical School of Michigan. She’s the mother of the family and teaching our New Testament Bible Foundations class each Monday night.
We had the first class this past Monday, so it’s not too late to join in. And by the way, when you see her, know that she had a little bit something to do with why we have our Director of Parish Operations, Michael Philpott, here. Michael, from Walmart Corporate, called up—they went to Cornell together, was in ROTC together, was in the same infantry vision together.
And so called Colleen and said, hey, there’s this job posting about St. John the Evangelist in Jackson, Michigan, what do you know? And she gave us a glowing recommendation of how awesome our parish was, and that got him to come here and interview, and we get the blessing of having Michael here on our staff and our team. So anyway, let us, in this Year of the Family, we’re going to put this icon up right there. We took it out of the parish hall, and we’re going to put it right there to remind us of the Year of the Family.
It’s not going to be there permanently. We’re going to bring it back to the parish hall after the Year of the Family has ended. But we want to do that to remind us of the fact that it is the Year of the Family.
It is a portrait of the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus there. And this is gifted to us by the Christians in Bethlehem, and thanksgiving for us, going out of our way to do our shopping for holy items during our parish pilgrimage back four years ago in 2022. May the Holy Family be our inspiration for our own domestic church as we live out God’s generosity with our family.