Is 55:6–9, Ps 145, Ph 1:20–24, 27a; Mt 20:1–16a.
Something similar happens in today’s Gospel. Jesus tells the story of a landowner who goes out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He hires some at dawn, others at nine, some at noon, some at three in the afternoon, and finally, astonishingly, some at five o’clock, when there is hardly any working day left. At sunset the owner pays them. Then comes the surprise: everyone receives the same daily wage. Immediately those who had worked from morning begin to complain. Their complaint sounds perfectly reasonable: “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (Matthew 20:12).
If we had been standing among those workers, probably many of us would have joined the protest. We might even have formed a committee before receiving our wages! The first workers were not cheated. They received exactly what they had agreed upon. Their problem was not that the owner gave them too little; their problem was that he gave somebody else more than they thought that person deserved. The owner asks the revealing question: “Are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15). Jesus is not giving a lesson in business management or proposing a salary structure. He is revealing the heart of God. God’s generosity cannot be measured with our little measuring tape.
That is precisely the message of Isaiah in the first reading: “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6). Then God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). We calculate; God gives. We compare; God loves. We remember how late somebody arrived; God rejoices that the person arrived at all. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).
The Old Testament gives us a wonderful example in Jonah. God sent Jonah to Nineveh, the capital of Israel’s enemy, Assyria. Jonah preached reluctantly, expecting destruction. But something unexpected happened: the people repented. From the king down to the ordinary people, they turned from their evil ways. “God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways,” and God spared the city (Jonah 3:10). We might imagine Jonah dancing with joy because his preaching had been successful. Instead, Jonah became angry! He had worked for God, but he was upset because God was merciful to somebody else. He knew that God was “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Jonah 4:2), but Jonah did not particularly want God to be gracious to the Ninevites.
Sometimes Jonah is hiding quietly inside us. We are happy that God is generous—until God becomes generous to someone whom we think does not deserve it. We rejoice when our child succeeds, but another person’s child doing better can suddenly disturb our peace. We thank God for our house until we see the neighbour’s larger house. We are grateful for our promotion until someone who joined the company five years after us receives a better one. Nothing has actually been taken away from us, yet comparison can turn gratitude into unhappiness. The workers in the vineyard went home with a full day’s wage in their pockets but probably with complaints in their mouths. Their money had not decreased; their joy had.
An old fable tells of a man who was offered anything he desired, with one condition: his neighbour would receive twice as much. If he asked for one acre of land, his neighbour would receive two. If he asked for ten gold coins, his neighbour would receive twenty. The man thought for a long time. Finally, he said, “Then make me blind in one eye.” The humour is dark, but the point is painfully recognizable. Envy does not merely dislike another person’s blessing; sometimes it is willing to lose something itself simply so that another person may have less.
Psalm 145 gives us the alternative: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 145:8). It continues, “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made” (Psalm 145:9). Notice that little word “all.” God’s goodness is wider than our preferred circle. Jesus repeatedly demonstrated this. He welcomed Zacchaeus, a tax collector despised by his neighbours (Luke 19:1–10). He promised paradise to the criminal dying beside him, a man who arrived at the vineyard almost at sunset: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). He restored Peter after Peter had denied him three times (John 21:15–19). Again and again, grace arrives where human beings think it should not.
Perhaps one of the most striking examples is the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. The younger son wastes his inheritance and returns home. His father runs to embrace him, clothes him, puts a ring on his finger and organizes a feast (Luke 15:20–24). The older brother hears the music and becomes angry. His argument sounds remarkably like that of the vineyard workers: “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you” (Luke 15:29). The father does not love the older son less. He tells him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). The younger son’s restoration has taken nothing from him. Yet he cannot enjoy the feast because he is busy calculating who deserves what.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux understood this mystery beautifully. She once compared souls to different-sized vessels. Imagine a small glass and a large jar, both filled completely with water. One contains more water, but both are full. She understood God’s love in this way. People have different gifts, different histories and different capacities, but God can fill each one completely. The happiness of another person therefore does not have to threaten our own. God does not have to love one person less in order to love another person more.
This also helps us understand St Paul in today’s second reading. Paul writes from imprisonment, uncertain whether he will live or die. Yet he says, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Philippians 1:21). He is caught between two desires: to depart and be with Christ, which he considers far better, and to remain alive because his presence may help the Christian community (Philippians 1:22–24). Paul has moved beyond constantly asking, “What am I getting?” His question has become, “How can Christ be glorified through me?” Therefore, he concludes by asking the Philippians to “live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27).
This freedom is visible in the lives of many saints. St Francis of Assisi was born into comfort and dreamed as a young man of glory and status. Gradually his encounter with Christ changed the scale by which he measured life. One decisive moment came when he encountered a leper. Francis had previously been repulsed by lepers, but he dismounted from his horse, approached the man, gave him alms and embraced him. What once seemed bitter became sweet to him. Francis discovered that life becomes very different when we stop asking who is above us and who is below us. The person whom society considered least became for Francis a place of encounter with Christ, recalling Jesus’ words: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
We sometimes see the same Gospel lived quietly by ordinary people. Consider a worker who has been in an office for twenty years when a younger colleague arrives. The younger employee learns quickly, receives recognition and perhaps even promotion. The older employee has two possibilities. He can spend every coffee break explaining why the younger person does not deserve it, or he can become a mentor, share what experience has taught him, and take satisfaction in helping another person succeed. The second person has discovered something important: another person’s success does not automatically mean my failure. There is room in God’s vineyard for both.
The same thing happens in families. One child may be academically brilliant; another may struggle with books but have extraordinary kindness. One earns more money; another quietly takes responsibility for ageing parents. One is noticed; another serves almost invisibly. Human beings easily create league tables, but God seems remarkably uninterested in our rankings. When Samuel went to the house of Jesse to anoint Israel’s future king, he was impressed by Eliab’s appearance. God corrected him: “The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). The forgotten shepherd boy David, called in from tending sheep, became the chosen one.
There is another beautiful Old Testament parallel in the manna given to Israel in the desert. Some Israelites gathered much and others gathered little, “but when they measured it…those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage” (Exodus 16:18). Everyone received enough. Centuries later Paul himself quotes this verse when encouraging Christians to share with one another (2 Corinthians 8:15). God’s economy is not built merely around accumulation but around sufficiency, generosity and communion.
The Gospel therefore invites us to notice one of the quiet thieves of happiness: comparison. A person can enjoy a perfectly good meal until he sees what has been served at the next table. Someone can be satisfied with a perfectly good mobile phone until a friend takes a newer one out of his pocket. We can even turn religion into comparison: Who attends more Masses? Who belongs to more organizations? Who has served the parish longer? The workers who entered the vineyard at dawn had the privilege of spending the whole day in the vineyard, but by evening they had begun to treat that privilege as a burden.
Perhaps that is why Jesus places the last beside the first. “The last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16). He overturns our ranking system. The thief on the cross entered at the last hour. Peter entered early and stumbled repeatedly. Paul arrived later after persecuting the Church. Yet all were gathered into the same mercy of Christ. Heaven is not a medal ceremony where we stand anxiously waiting to see whether somebody else receives a larger trophy. It is the Father’s house where the joy of one becomes the joy of all.
Victor Hugo’s Bishop Myriel could have calculated what Jean Valjean deserved. Instead, he chose generosity, and that generosity helped create a new man. The owner of the vineyard could have given the late workers only a few coins. Instead, he gave them enough to take home to their families. God could deal with us only according to what we deserve, but the whole Christian story tells us something much more hopeful: “The Lord is gracious and merciful” (Psalm 145:8).
Perhaps the simplest message to carry home is this: do not measure your life with somebody else’s ruler. When something good happens to another person, it has not necessarily taken anything away from us. When someone begins again late in life, there is still room in the vineyard. When someone receives mercy after making mistakes, we can remember how often we ourselves live by mercy. And when we wonder why God’s ways do not fit our calculations, Isaiah gives us the answer: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).
At the end of the day, the question is not whether we entered the vineyard at six in the morning, nine, noon, three, or five in the evening. The grace is that the Owner came looking for us at all. So perhaps everyday happiness becomes a little easier when we learn three simple things: receive what God gives with gratitude, rejoice when another person is blessed, and leave the measuring of hearts to God. His generosity is larger than our calculations, his mercy is greater than our failures, and, fortunately for all of us, his ways are higher than ours.
Satish Selvarance