Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

God calls, God invites. That is the message this Sunday. Our God is not on vacation; He is not absent in our lives. If God calls it is because He loves us and because we matter to Him. The first call of God was for our existence. We are created free to accept or reject His voice. That is why we need to hear His voice as a guide. His voice talks to our entire being, not only to what we were in the past, to denounce our sins, but to all our being, to all we can become (Is 55: 6-9).

Why don’t we understand His plans? We have a narrow vision, limited in many aspects. If we can only make it broader… not limited only to the past and present… Like God we’ll be able to see in Saul the persecutor of Christians, Paul, the great apostle, in a common young guy the great Francis of Assisi and in a simple fisherman the first Pope and fisher of men.

Even more than that… If we see like God, we will see that there is beauty not only in not making mistakes, but also in finding forgiveness. It is precisely that beauty that is so hard for us to find and it is so essential if only we try to understand the immensity of the love God has for you and me.

“The last will be the first”.  When we do not agree with this principle it is because we fear in many occasions. It contradicts our conception of what fear is. 

The "first ones" in the case of the Gospel (Mt 20, 1-16) were the ones hired in the beginning of the day. The "last ones" were the ones that were hired late in the day. For all of them the possibility to work was in itself a gift, because all of them were without doing anything, without direction in their lives. But that gift stopped appearing as a burden in the mind of the early birds. The gift became tedious, another common task to which we normally respond with lack of thankfulness. It gave them the capacity to criticize and too much sensibility to their own pain and lack of comfort.

Dear Lord, I sometimes see things from a very human and selfish point of view. Sometimes I find myself getting angry because others may have more than I do. Help me understand that the most important thing to be truly happy in my life is to be aware of the need I have of your grace. I love you because you have loved me without my deserving your love. Lord, help me to appreciate and be grateful for your grace.