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.
Pride, lust, and avarice are ravaging the world and destroying souls. The only way to overcome sin is to strike at the root of pride. We need to conquer our fallen nature and allow God to guide us in recognizing our sins and gaining mastery over them, emerging as His true children.
It is not what we profess in words, but rather what we profess through our actions that matters to God. The undesirables of society have a stronger awareness of their unworthiness. This is why they will make it to heaven more easily than those who believe they have done God’s will by speaking the right words.
Jesus helps us understand through the parable that when we profess our faith, we must be open to God working in us and through us. It is because of this that the length of time spent or type of work we have done for God’s glory matters little. Even deathbed contrition can garner souls a place in heaven.
This Sunday’s Gospel reveals God’s immense mercy, even to those that decide to change at the very last minute. There is hope for all until death. This is what those who have always been with God must understand and refrain from being judgemental toward converted brethren and bitter about God’s decisions of favor.
The sin that Jesus addresses in this passage is the sin of unforgiveness. It clearly depicts the wrath of God that will be inflicted upon those who refuse to forgive others. The “wicked servant” to whom this is addressed was a man who was forgiven a “huge amount” by God. This is all of us.
Just as God is willing to forgive us any and all wrongdoings we are culpable for, we too must extend the same mercy to our brethren if we are to reflect the glory of God.
The number one enemy of reconciliation is pride. Pride is a habit by which we think about ourselves first and foremost, or even exclusively in the most serious cases. Pride makes self-evaluation impossible.
Jesus advises us on how we must impart brotherly correction to save someone from losing their soul. Only when all means are exhausted, must the most stringent punishment be meted out. Even in that, Christians must check their own motivations in correcting someone else.
Fear can paralyze us. But fear, in this case, is a response that is based on an error. We embrace that error when we act out of selfishness. Each of us will die. That’s a fact. The question is how we die. We can either die selfishly, seeing our earthly life as the center of all. Or we can die in a self-giving way with our Lord by uniting ourselves to His act of sacrificial love.