September 20, 2026
Is 55:6-9; Phil 1:20c-24,27; Mt 20:1-16a
Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year “A”
This Gospel passage is not a treatise on social justice. It does not speak of the just wage to be paid to wage earners, but concerns the Gentiles who will receive the Good News and be the first to enter the Kingdom, while the Jews, for the most part, will reject this Good News. The Church Fathers found so many allegorical applications in it that we are undoubtedly permitted to apply it allegorically to our current situation as well.
The main teaching of this text is that God is good, generous, and merciful; and that everything we receive from Him is a pure and free gift. Whenever we think we deserve something or have earned certain rights, we are mistaken. This is true in our relationship with God, in our relationships with our brothers and sisters within our community; it is also true in all our other interpersonal relationships.
When each of us meets our Creator upon reaching the other Shore, the fact that we served Him faithfully in monastic life for fifty years, or ten years, or ten days will, in and of itself, make no difference. All that will matter then is the intensity of our love at that moment. Nor will the mistakes—or even the foolish things—we may have done throughout this life matter, nor will the humble or distinguished services we may have rendered to our communities or to the Order. For each of us, the invitation to enter into our Father’s Joy will be a gift given freely. This does not invite us to carelessness or indifference, but rather to do everything with complete selflessness, out of love, and not for the purpose of earning merit, much less simply to avoid punishment.
By virtue of our coenobitic monastic vocation, our communities are called to be places where God is present, signs of His gratuitous love for all His sons and daughters. Whether there are three, thirty, or three hundred of us in a community, it is the same love of God that has brought us together, the same love of God that seeks to manifest itself through our daily lives, the same love of God that seeks to transform the universe by gradually transforming us into His image. This witness remains the same, whether our community is one year, ten years, one hundred years, or one thousand years old. Everything else is vanity of vanities, as Ecclesiastes would say.
Our second reading this morning is taken from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, a letter of great beauty and also of a certain freshness. Philippi had been the first city in Europe to receive the Christian message, during Paul’s third missionary journey. It was a very small Christian community, with which Paul—the apostle to the Christians of the last hour—maintained a very beautiful relationship, similar to that of Jesus with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—another small community (whose great vulnerability became apparent upon Lazarus’s death). In his letter, written while in captivity, Paul speaks in a personal and even intimate tone. Although he was a prisoner, he was a happy man.
At the time of writing, Paul had already appeared before the court but had not yet received his sentence. That sentence could have been either his release or his execution. It is generally accepted that this refers to Paul’s imprisonment in Ephesus, and not to his final imprisonment in Rome. He was therefore not an elderly man; rather, he was in the prime of life, in his late forties or early fifties. He was a man who, over the years, through suffering and struggles, had gained a deep understanding of himself and was able to recognize the various—and sometimes conflicting—desires of his heart.
He was overflowing with joy at the thought of Christ’s love for him. He therefore longed to die and be with Christ forever. But he also knew that Christ was his life, even here on earth. He longed to continue preaching about Him and to remain with his friends, especially the Philippians. He did not know whether he should choose to die to be with Christ or to live to proclaim Him. However, he knew that, one way or another, Christ would be exalted in him.
Paul is a happy man because he is free—free from fear, free from personal ambitions, free from everything that is not Christ. If we want our personal lives as well as the lives of our communities to be filled with this same joy, and to manifest the presence of Christ, we must ask for the grace of this great inner freedom—like Paul’s—which makes us just as willing to fade into the background to be united with Him as we are to continue working to make Him present in our world today.
Nothing is a matter of merit, and nothing is a tragedy. Everything is grace.
Armand VEILLEUX