Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Every one of us, has a unique path to be followed in pursuing our relationship with God. He had devised a plan for you and I long before we ever came into being, and guess what, He did it without consulting us or asking any advice on what our preferences were for the content, the style, or the timeline of how our lives and our relationship with Him would play out. If that sounds like I am being a bit condescending in the way I am phrasing this, your right, but only because it is the dialogue that I use with myself when I need a reminder that Gods plan for me doesn’t require my approval, critiques, or consultation – ever. What is more, I don’t think I am the only one that sometimes questions or even gets a bit frustrated with not being privy to what God has in store for me, or how that contrasts with what I think I see him doing within other peoples lives.

Why is it that sometimes others seem to be so much further along in their knowledge and depth of faith than I seem to be? Why do they seem to just “get it” when it comes to understanding the Gospel message, and I in contrast seem to need to study and struggle just to gain a bit of insight? Why do others sometimes seem to just skate along when I must struggle? These are all very human questions, if perhaps a bit self-indulgent. Yet we struggle with these sometimes. We even grumble about how we think we are being treated relative to what we think we observe in the status of others. The thing is, more often than not, we don’t know the full story, because unlike our Lord, we have no idea what those other people have been through, or what burdens they currently carry – all we see is the surface.

We can be pretty sure the vineyard workers that were grumbling against the owner in our Gospel today did not take the time to ponder the actual fairness of what they received. They got the promised wage, one that would help sustain them and their families, yet all they chose to see was that someone appeared to have gotten a bit more, in the sense that it appeared to be more easily attained. They looked only to their own struggles, their own discomfort, their own time expended. It never occurred to them that in the end – they had received their reward, and that the reward was still of great value to them. When we seem to struggle for understanding God’s plan, or for being able to find within ourselves that fragment of faith that will see us through, and in contrast see others who don’t seem to need to labor as much, we might need to consider what else in their lives we are not seeing. What they have struggled with, and what They may very well be carrying now that we are unaware of, and instead be grateful for the graces that we have received, and for the opportunity to struggle a bit. Working for something, and persevering through difficult situations makes what is gained all the more valuable and memorable. Our Lord sees our struggles as precious, because He intimately knows at what cost our understanding of Him, and our faith in Him sometimes comes. Perhaps we need do need to work a bit harder to understand His plan, perhaps it may take us a bit longer to realize all that we need to learn, perhaps that is just the uniqueness of the perfect plan that He has devised for each one of us, and that we have been on our whole lives even if we did not always realize it. Perhaps, we just need to be grateful for the graces we HAVE received.