Message from Fr. Brito:

25th Sunday Year A

     In today’s first reading God speaks to us through the prophet Isaiah, “for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways”. This got me thinking, how do we know God’s thought and how do God’s ways become our ways? The Lord is calling us to follow his ways and to begin to think as he thinks. So where do we begin? Well Jesus said: No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the son wishes to reveal him”. He also said “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. (John 6:46) The best quickest way to know God and yes, I will go as far as to say the only way to know God and his ways is to know the Son. 

      Today the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, gives us a parable that helps us understand God’s ways. First of all it is God himself who calls us to work in his vineyard. The invitation comes to each of us a certain times of our lives. Some are called early and must work a full day, others are called much later, and these also must put their heart into their work even though the time is much shorter. At the end of the day the pay is all the same for those who labored. The pay is heaven. In heaven there is no jealousy and not lacking. Everyone who enters will receive the same reward. The reward is God himself. Well we may still protest. It is not fair, those last workers and in fact all the late-comers should not be given the same pay but rather a lesser reward. But there is no lesser reward in heaven. We must have the same zeal for souls as God does. We must hope and encourage others to come to Christ and rejoice in their salvation even if they turn to God at the very last hour. God is generous and we must be also.

Let us take a quick look at the second reading. 

       St. Paul is longing for heaven, but he is also longing to carry out his duties as one who labors in the vineyard of the Lord. If he had the power to leave this life and enter eternal life or to stay and bring more souls to salvation to join him in the heavenly reward, he is not sure which to choose. But it is not up to Paul to decide when his laboring is up; that is up to God.

       So today we all have been called. How will we respond? What am I doing to bring others to Christ? 

Isaiah message is urgent: “seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near. Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts; let him turn to the Lord for mercy; to our God who is generous in forgiving” Amen