20th Week in Ordinary Time (B) : Thursday 19th August 2021

Parables cannot be transferred from their original setting to ordinary life; otherwise, there is a danger that their interpretation will be at variance with Jesus’ intention and give rise to erroneous applications.

This is true in a special way about the parable which we read today. It is specifically about “the Kingdom of God”: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”. This Kingdom is not about any system of wages or labour rules.

It is the eternity of divine love and freedom. God has created us, this human race, with its mysterious and quite disorientating range of saints and sinners. Saint Augustine reminds us that any question of the form: “why did God…?” can only be answered by the single word “love”.

This is because we cannot read the mind of God apart from what is revealed to us in the Incarnation of Jesus and the consequent Scriptures (see Jn 3:16). In the Scriptures, we find an even more mysterious answer to everything: “God is love”.

With the grace of God, we can interiorise this statement, but on this side of heaven, we are not capable of fully understanding its eternal and divine depths.

Hence any reduction of this parable to approve or disapprove of any socio-economic practice is far from the mark. However, the parable reminds us that all human justice systems are merely faint shadows of the only true justice, namely divine justice, a fruit of divine love.

Make me grasp the way of Your precepts, and I will muse on Your wonders!