God Is Offering Us a Copy of The Final Exam Early

We do like closure, don’t we? We have all left a movie or finished a book with a sense of frustration because it did not end adequately. Perhaps, it just stopped without really ending, or left some scenes hanging. Scripture agrees with our frustration. It tells us that as surely as God called human history into being, God will bring it to conclusion. Time ends at the feet of Christ the king of our hearts.

God the Judge… to Save

Hell exists, but it is not a place created by God to punish bad people at the end of life. It is a condition of unhappiness and despair resulting from sin. The question, therefore, is not who will be counted as sheep and goats at the end of the world, but on what occasions today do we behave as sheep or as goats? We are sheep when we love our sisters and brothers; we are goats when we neglect them.

The Image of God Engraved on You

If the coin had to be “returned” to Caesar because on it was stamped the face of his master, the human person must be “returned” to God. The human person is the only creature on whom the face of God is imprinted. They are sacred and no one can take them as their own. Those who make them their own (enslave, oppress, exploit, dominate, use them as objects…) should immediately return them to their Lord.

Invited to dance with God

The wedding feast is the biblical image of the encounter of love between the Lord and Israel. In the parable, the bridegroom—the son—is Jesus, and the bride is the whole of humanity. The banquet is the happiness of the Messianic era. Whoever accepts the proposal of the gospel and enters the kingdom of God experiences the most authentic and deepest joy.

Do Not Pretend to be the Masters of the Lord’s Vineyard

God intervenes to make evil serve the good, making it yield a masterpiece of salvation. In the parable in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, the end result of the intervention of the master is the delivery of the vineyard to other workers who will make it produce fruits. This is his gesture of love and salvation. Today, every Christian is a vine grower from whom the Lord expects delivery of the fruits.