August 19, 2026, Wednesday of the 20th week
Ezekiel 34, 1-11; Matt 20, 1-16
Homily
According to all the principles accepted today in the field of labour relations, the employer in our Gospel acts in a rather strange and even unacceptable way. His attitude certainly does not correspond to our criteria of justice, and is even disconcerting. Equally disconcerting are the last words of the parable: ‘The last will be first and the first will be last’. The first Christians seem to have been confused by these words of Jesus, each of the Evangelists placing them in a different context, and Matthew even repeating them twice.
It is clear that the real meaning of this Gospel passage is not about the right wage to be paid to salaried workers, but rather about the Gentiles who will receive the Good News and enter the Kingdom first, while the Jews, for the most part, will refuse this Good News.
What's more, we must not forget that Jesus' teaching in his Parables is not primarily moral -- and even less moralistic -- but rather “dogmatic”. The primary aim of the parables is to teach us who the Father is. So let us not limit ourselves to looking in the parable we have just read for a teaching about who is first and who is last in the kingdom. Let us look first and foremost for a lesson about God's gratuitous goodness towards us all. Despite all our differences, including those of action and virtue, we are all equal before God because we are all the object of his absolutely free generosity towards us: ‘Why are you jealous, says God, if I want to be good?’
Today we celebrate the Memory of Blessed Guerric of our Order.
Armand Veilleux