Year A: Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

In two days time I’ll be going to Rome for the Synod that is taking place in the Vatican. It’ll last four weeks. We know it’s something Pope Francis sees as very important. There are all kinds of issues and challenges facing the Church but the main one is the deep down issue – how are we getting on with one another, how are we getting on with those who no longer come to Church? How are we getting on with people who are searching for meaning in their lives but find the Church has too many doors closed to them? That’s what the Synod will be about.

In reading today’s Gospel, it struck me that the parable Jesus told about the workers in the Vineyard is a good story to help us think about the Church. The story isn’t so much about just wages or your rights. It’s more about emphasising how God keeps calling people into his Kingdom of love, mercy and peace. Five times, right up to the eleventh hou, the landowner went out calling people into the vineyard.  Jesus wants to make the point through this parable that God is always on the look-out for us, right up to the eleventh hour. God never gives up on us. He wants everyone to feel they are called.

We ourselves or people we know can sometimes feel we’ve made a mess of things in our lives or we’ve never really managed to get involved much in the community. Or we can think of others we know that feel they are far from the Church. Jesus is saying through this parable – it’s never too late. God is rich in forgiving as the First Reading puts it. God’s mercy is always there. God is always looking out for them. And God isn’t stingy. Once we or they take the step to say “yes” to God’s invitation, God wants to shower us and them with his great mercy and love, with the same measure as he wants to shower it on everyone.

One of the big moments during the World Youth Day that I attended in Lisbon with a group of young people from the Diocese of limerick – there was a million and a half young people overall! - was when the Pope said with great emphasis and strength: the Church is for “everyone, everyone, everyone” (In Spanish: “todos, todos, todos”). This is what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel: everyone is called. It makes no difference at what stage they’re called and the wage will be generous for everyone even if they get in at the last hour. Pope Francis has said somewhere that the first canonised saint was the Good Thief!

Of course, if God is generous, all-merciful and reaching out to all, then we who are disciples of Jesus are called to be likewise. It’s so easy for us to have judgements about this person or that person, what they’re worth or not worth, whether they’re busy people or lazy… But they are our human calculations. I think we can all identify with the workers who had been out all day grumbling when they saw the others getting the same wage. The “first” probably thought of the “last” as loafers, wasters, inferior and here they are now getting the same reward! The First Reading reminds us God’s ways and thoughts are way beyond ours. The parable in the Gospel is an invitation to lift up our way of looking at those we consider the “last” in society and take on God’s way of seeing things. The Second Reading tells us to avoid anything in our everyday lives that would be unworthy of the Gospel of Christ. Our love has to reflect God’s love, shown to us in Christ, and to reach out in mercy to everyone we meet. Again, in the words of Pope Francis, “everyone, everyone, everyone”.

So the Synod is Rome will be about that – how can the Church community be a community where everyone can feel welcome, where they can feel they belong, where no matter at what point they arrive, they can come in. We’re to see how the “last”, as we consider see them, are indeed among the “first” in God’s eyes. Just as the first workers in today’s Gospel learned a lesson, so too we’ve to be open to the lessons the Spirit wants to teach us at the Synod.

One last point. Today is International World Day of Migrants and Refugees. The issue of migrants and refugees has become a big issue in Europe. Yesterday and the day before Pope Francis was in Marseilles in France, talking about this issue. He repeated something he has often said:  Migrants must be welcomed, protected/accompanied, promoted and integrated. If this does not take place then migrants end up on the margins of society. The Pope encouraged us let ourselves be moved by the stories of so many of our unfortunate brothers and sisters who have had to feel their land because of war, famine or other traumas. I remember a teacher telling me last Christmas how on the day when school was finishing, the children brought little gifts for the teacher. A Ukrainian child who had just arrived, not knowing what was going on, had a biscuit and came and offered it to the teacher. The teacher was very moved by it. I know that here in Abbeyfeale and West Limerick you have offered hospitality to refugees. It is a good thing. It is a way of mirroring the image of God presented in the parable today – going out to call people into the vineyard and showing them the great kindness of the heart of our God.