You too go into the vineyard (Cynthia Bourgeault)

    [In Sunday’s parable,] the vineyard, as it tends to be throughout Jesus’s teaching, is a symbol of the relational field, the dynamic interactiveness of the kingdom of God. 

    Whatever reason we may project onto the vineyard owner for bringing people in, what he actually states is that he’s bringing people in because he can’t stand to see them isolated and just sitting around on their own: “You too go into the vineyard.” The real fruit of this day is not a bunch of grapes getting harvested. It is human beings working together, doing something that’s dignified. You can imagine the songs, the work, and all the things that happen when you’re participating and engaged jointly in an activity. The idea of paying them the same simply invites people to put their attention on what the real proportions are. When “more and less” are introduced into the equation at the end of the parable, we’re just scattering our attention. 

    The bottom line is that everybody has enough. The ones that came in early thought the usual daily wage was fair. That’s taken care of. The real fruit being generated, just like grapes turn into wine, was the work together. In these circumstances, it’s fermented and transformed into some fragrance of human interactivity and abundance that doesn’t exist otherwise. 

    It’s not until you begin from the fullness of love, and the order and coherence that arise from it, that you can recognize what’s being said [in this parable] and how radical it is. 

    We get the invitation to go into the vineyard, but it’s only in stepping up, saying yes, and trusting the relational field that we’re going to actually be participants in the kingdom of God. 

--Cynthia Bourgeault

Image source: Vincent Van Gogh, Red Vineyards at Arles (1888), https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/09/18/gods-goodness-and-the-laborers-in-the-vineyard/
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, September 20, 2026: Seek the Lord...

Seek the Lord...
How often do you find yourself looking for God? 

    Though we will certainly never really understand God – For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, the Lord tells Isaiah – we certainly can appreciate the wonderful benefits of relationship with the God who loved us into existence. And while we may turn our back on God, shutting ourselves off, forsaking God, God, for his part, encourages us always to return: Seek the Lord while he may be found, Isaiah reminds the people of Israel, for it is with God that we ultimately find life and love, mercy and forgiveness. Psalm 145 reminds us of God’s qualities that make this so: The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness… To sing God’s praises in this way is to make a confession of our acceptance of the terms of covenant, recognizing our desire for relationship, allowing the connection, restoring it if need be. God wants us to seek that relationship, one in which we will find compassion and justice on our journey. 

    Yet it is not necessarily ours to understand God’s justice either, as our gospel reading from Matthew demonstrates. When a vineyard owner pays the workers who arrive an hour before closing time the same wage as the workers who arrived in the early morning, our human hackles start to rise. That’s not fair! But again, my thoughts are not your thoughts: God makes it possible for all to live, the first to come to God as well as the last. Is it up to us to begrudge the on who comes at the last hour, or will we rejoice because they love the Lord? After all, they are following Isaiah’s directive: Seek the Lord… And God’s love is open to them as well. 

    God’s love is a free gift – wherever we might be. Paul tells the Philippians that whether he lives or dies, his desire is that Christ be magnified in his body; he has dedicated himself to the love of God revealed in Jesus, and spends his every waking hour sharing that Good News, fruitful labor that helps Paul to maintain his connection with the God who created him. Through obedience – conducting himself in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, Paul demonstrates how to seek the Lord while he may be found… We, too, are called to seek the Lord through our attention to relationship, with God, with other, preaching the good news so long as we are able, magnifying Christ with our bodies, so that those who seek him may find him in the love we share. 

This “vintage” post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

A forgiving way of doing justice (Ronald Franz / Caitlin Morneau)

When you forgive, you love.
And when you love,
God’s light shines upon you.

–Ronald Franz,
qtd. in Into the Wild

    Forgiveness is fundamentally an individual act, but with social implications. Every harm has repercussions, rippling impacts through time and community. Really living into the fullness of forgiveness means moving toward as full a reclamation of human dignity and communion as possible. 

    When this becomes the way in which we move and live and have our being, suddenly seven times seventy becomes far more attainable — not a heroic act for the few. But we cannot do it alone. We need to encourage one another daily. And build up systems (legal and otherwise) that create vessels for mercy and grace to shape the labor of justice itself. 

    Because of Christ’s sacrifice and the gift of the Holy Spirit, this forgiving way of doing justice is not out of reach. It is being taken up in communities across this country, and has been alive in native and indigenous cultures for generations. What’s more, it abides within each of us. We might need to peel back the layers of retribution and individualism that mask it, but at our core dwells this desire, God’s desire to love one another as God loves us. May it be so. Amen. 

--Caitlin Morneau

Image source 1: https://daily.jstor.org/catholics-against-racism/
Image source 2: https://catholicworker.substack.com/p/the-catholic-worker-calls-christians
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

Love needs to be built upon mercy (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

Forgiveness was meant to broaden our view,
to help us see one another more clearly,
and to help us see God at work more clearly.

 --Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, January 16, 2025

    To say that we love God or to say that we love our brothers and sisters may in fact not get at the point. Because love needs needs to be built upon a mercy, an understanding, a willingness to understand, and our ability to open our hearts. Love can be a static sort of thing that we sort of possess, as if that were enough, and yet love is truly an investment in one another. 

    It is the mercy that we have received from God. That is the mercy we are supposed to mete out to the world. And yet in our time, it is harder and harder for us to recognize that mercy. 

    I go back to that professor in Rome who asked us a question at the end of her presentation on the Passion narrative as it is depicted in Renaissance and Baroque art: How can we paint a crucifixion for today in a world where no one recognizes their own need for mercy, or their own sin? How do you make that death matter? How do you make that life matter? 

    It’s played out in us, and it’s played out through mercy. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, January 8, 2026

Image source: Renato Guttuso, Crucifixion (1941). For a well-developed analysis of this remarkable painting, go to: https://www.americamagazine.org/art/2013/03/14/contemporary-crucifixion/

Risk proclaiming the prodigal character of God's mercy (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

   Those of us who are parents, ministers, teachers, catechists, and elders must risk proclaiming the prodigal character of God’s mercy. We must not spend God’s mercy as if it were ours to spend, dole out God’s forgiveness as if it were a limited commodity, put conditions on God’s love as if God were a narrow tyrant or a political ideology, or cut off access to God as if we were the keepers of the heavenly gates. We are not! If we link God’s mercy to our own assessment of things, we then link it to our own limits, wounds, and biases. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Image source: Domenico Fetti, The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (ca. 1619-1621), https://lectionaryart.org/2016/09/21/the-unforgiving-servant/
Quotation source

Must you forgive them? (Marcy St. John)

    Jesus’ parable teaches us about mercy — about what mercy looks like and how we are to give it to others. Recall the time when you were a child and you acted badly — most likely toward a brother or sister or other relative. Recall that moment when you knew you “were in big trouble” and had to go to your parent for confession and mercy. Recall that feeling in your stomach, or your head, and your heart. Jesus tells Peter what mercy looks like: If your brother sins against you, forgive him not seven times but seventy-seven times. There is discussion in the Babylonian Talmud — one of the sources of Jewish law and teachings — that forgiveness must be unconditionally given three times — so we should understand seventy-seven as an indefinitely large number. In other words — forgive your brother again and again, always and forever. 

    We believe that God is merciful, and will show mercy to us. But this tells us that it isn’t for nothing that he grants mercy. We, too, must be merciful to receive mercy. Again, we must forgive those who trespass against us always, as many times as needed. This message so important that it is in the prayer we pray most often — at every Mass, at every service: when we gather together with other Catholics, when we gather together with other Christians, and even when we gather with those who are not Christian but who know this prayer — because it is The Lord’s Prayer. We ask God to “forgive us our trespassers as we forgive those who trespass against us.” 

   Why must this be? There are those who have greatly wronged others — the coworker who lies and gets you fired; the banker who refuses to give you relief on your debts; the sister who keeps you from seeing your parent; the criminal who assaults your child or husband. Must you forgive them? This is America! I have rights — the right to sue, to accuse, to demand, to fight, to pursue Justice. 

    I won’t tell you that that is not so. There are times when you do need to defend yourself in the courts on earth against those who have harmed you. But even when you need to take those steps, you still need to forgive the person or persons who trespassed against you. 

   Why? 

    Because Jesus forgives. Because failing to do so injures your own heart and keeps you from your connection to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is a block, a stone, a pebble, a shard, a nugget of pain and resentment and anger. Or, as Pope Francis calls it, “a bothersome fly in the summer that keeps coming back” It keeps you from fully taking in the Word of God, the lessons of Christ, and the works of the Holy Spirit that are active, alive and giving us grace and mercy every day. 

--Marcy St. John,
OLMC Communion Service,
March 5, 2024

Image source: https://pastorduncansblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/forgiveness-reflections-on-parable-of.html

A welcoming and merciful attitude toward everyone (Pope Francis)

    This is the logic that guides Jesus’ mission and the mission of the Church: go in search, “fish” for men and women, not to proselytize, but to restore full dignity and freedom to all, through the forgiveness of sins. This is the essential point of Christianity: to spread the free and regenerative love of God, with a welcoming and merciful attitude toward everyone, so that each person can encounter God’s tenderness and have the fullness of life. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source 1: Br. Mickey McGrath, St. Frances Cabrini, available for purchase at: https://trinitystores.com/products/wall-frame-gold-st-frances-cabrini-by-m-mcgrath?srsltid=AfmBOoo6GEhZi16BOxZzbYNz6xjP9ye7xTX9eB9IDKM5REwvbTC5mWaC
Image source 2: https://www.catholiccompany.com/blogs/magazine/st-frances-xavier-cabrini-giving-without-reserve
Quotation source