Reflection for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I don’t think God would make a good business man. Then again, He isn’t in the business of business. His business is in love and mercy. And He is so good at that.

If I were hired for 8 hours of work and was offered a certain amount, then someone was hired for one hour of work, and at the end of the day we both got the same amount, I would probably be upset, like the man in today’s Gospel. But if the owner of the shop was Jesus, I hope I would say, ‘Isn’t that just like Him!’

As Catholic believers, when we hear of a ‘deathbed conversion,’ most of us would feel so grateful for the mercy of God toward the eleventh-hour saint. We’d say, ‘Oh, the Mystery of God’s mercy!’

But it might be understandable if a few among us thought to ourselves, ‘Wait! I’ve worked for thirty years trying to please God so I could be with Him one day, and this one gets his crown after just a few hours in the Church. What’s that about?’

What that’s about is the love God pours out over every single soul!  His economy of salvation is unlike anything we could ever understand.

But look what we would have missed along the way if we waited ’till our moment of dying to be converted: all the Holy Communions; hearing the words of Jesus through our parish priest, I absolve you from your sins; the times in prayer when we felt the Holy Spirit so close to us.

All that we would have never known, and so much more. Still, in His mysterious way of Mercy, we will all meet in heaven because we responded to His Love, whenever we let ourselves be found by Him.

So let us continue to pray for the conversion of sinners, and ask for the gift of perseverance for ourselves until death.  And let’s not count the hours or measure the amount of our good works against another’s.

God is so merciful, if we but approach Him for greater love—no matter at first light or in the fading of the day.

But I know this much is true:

The longer we love Him, the greater our joy.

Both here and in Eternity.

Blessed be God forever….