The Parable of Two Sons

27 September 2020 | Saint Peter’s Square

With his preaching on the Kingdom of God, Jesus opposes a religiosity that does not involve human life, that does not question the conscience and its responsibility in the face of good and evil. He also demonstrates this with the parable of the two sons, which is offered to us in the Gospel of Matthew (cf. 21:28-32). To the father’s invitation to go and work in the vineyard, the first son impulsively responds “no, I’m not going”, but then he repents and goes; instead the second son, who immediately replies “yes, yes dad”, does not actually do so; he doesn’t go. Obedience does not consist in saying “yes” or “no”, but always in taking action, in cultivating the vineyard, in bringing about the Kingdom of God, in doing good. With this simple example, Jesus wants to go beyond a religion understood only as an external and habitual practice, which does not affect people’s lives and attitudes, a superficial religiosity, merely “ritual”, in the ugly sense of the word.

The exponents of this “façade” of religiosity, of which Jesus disapproves, in that time were “the chief priests and the elders of the people” (Mt 21:23), who, according to the Lord’s admonition, will be preceded in the Kingdom of God by “tax collectors and prostitutes” (cf. v. 31). Jesus tells them: “the tax collectors, meaning the sinners, and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you”. This affirmation must not lead us to think that those who do not follow God’s commandments, those who do not follow morality, saying, “In any case, those who go to Church are worse than us”, do well. No, this is not Jesus’ teaching. Jesus does not indicate publicans and prostitutes as models of life, but as “privileged by Grace”. And I would like to underscore this word, “grace”. Grace. Because conversion is always a grace. A grace that God offers to anyone who opens up and converts to him. Indeed, these people, listening to his preaching, repented and changed their lives. Let us think of Matthew, for example. Saint Matthew, who was a publican, a traitor to his homeland.

In today’s Gospel, the one who makes the best impression is the first brother, not because he said “no” to his father, but because after his “no” he converted to “yes”, he repented. God is patient with each of us: he does not tire, he does not desist after our “no”; he leaves us free even to distance ourselves from him and to make mistakes. Thinking about God’s patience is wonderful! How the Lord always waits for us; he is always beside us to help us; but he respects our freedom. And he anxiously awaits our “yes”, so as to welcome us anew in his fatherly arms and to fill us with his boundless mercy. Faith in God asks us to renew every day the choice of good over evil, the choice of the truth rather than lies, the choice of love for our neighbour over selfishness. Those who convert to this choice, after having experienced sin, will find the first places in the Kingdom of heaven, where there is greater joy for a single sinner who repents than for ninety-nine righteous people (cf. Lk 15:7).

But conversion, changing the heart, is a process, a process that purifies us from moral encrustations. And at times it is a painful process, because there is no path of holiness without some sacrifice and without a spiritual battle. Battling for good; battling so as not to fall into temptation; doing for our part what we can, to arrive at living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes. Today’s Gospel passage calls into question the way of living a Christian life, which is not made up of dreams and beautiful aspirations, but of concrete commitments, in order to always open ourselves to God’s will and to love for our brothers and sisters. But this, even the smallest concrete commitment, cannot be made without grace. Conversion is a grace we must always ask for: “Lord, give me the grace to improve. Give me the grace to be a good Christian”.

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The Logic of the Father’s Love

24 September 2017 | Saint Peter’s Square

In today’s Gospel reading (cf Mt 20:1-16) there is the parable of the day labourers in the vineyard, which Jesus recounts in order to explain two aspects of the Kingdom of God: the first is that God wants to call everyone to work for his Kingdom; the second is that, in the end, he wants to give everyone the same reward, that is, salvation, eternal life.

The owner of the vineyard who represents God, goes out at dawn and hires a group of workers, agreeing with them on the day’s wages. It was a fair wage. Then he goes out again [several times] later in the day — he goes out five times on that day — until the late afternoon to hire other unemployed labourers whom he sees. At the end of the day, the landowner orders that a denarius be paid to everyone, even to those who had only worked for a few hours. Naturally, the labourers who were hired first complain because they see that they are paid as much as those who worked for fewer hours. The landowner however, reminds them about what had been agreed; if he then wants to be generous with the others, they should not be envious.

In reality, this “injustice” of the owner serves to provoke in those listening to the parable a qualitative leap because here Jesus does not want to speak about the issue of work or of a fair wage, but about the Kingdom of God! And this is the message: there are no unemployed people in the Kingdom of God. Everyone is called to do their part; and there will be a reward from divine justice for everyone in the end — not from human [justice], luckily! —, but the salvation that Jesus Christ acquired for us with his death and Resurrection, a salvation which is not deserved, but donated — salvation is free — thus, “the last will be the first and the first last” (Mt 20:16).

With this parable, Jesus wants to open our hearts to the logic of the Father’s love which is free and generous. It is about allowing oneself to be astonished and fascinated by the “thoughts” and the “ways” of God which, as the Prophet Isaiah recalls, are not our thoughts and not our ways (cf Is 55:8). Human thoughts are often marked by selfishness and personal advantages, and our narrow and contorted paths are not comparable to the wide and straight streets of the Lord. He uses mercy — do not forget this: He uses mercy —, he forgives broadly, is filled with generosity and kindness which he pours forth on each of us. He opens for everyone the boundless territory of his love and his grace, which alone can give the human heart the fullness of joy.

Jesus wants to make us contemplate the gaze of that landowner: the gaze with which he looks upon each of the labourers searching for work and calls them to go to his vineyard. It is a gaze which is filled with attention, kindness. It is a gaze which calls, invites one to get up and begin a journey because he wants life for each of us; he wants a full, committed life, safe from emptiness and inertia. God excludes no one and wants each of us to achieve his or her fullness. This is the love of our God, of our God who is Father.

May Mary Most Holy help us welcome into our lives the logic of love which frees us from the presumption of deserving God’s reward and from the critical judgement of others.

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5 October 2014 | Saint Peter’s Square

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On the Anniversary of the Death of Pope John Paul I

21 September 2008 | Papal Summer Residence, Castel Gandolfo

Today the liturgy presents to us the Gospel parable of the two sons sent by their father to work in his vineyard. One of them immediately agrees to go but then does not; the other instead refuses but later repents and complies with his father’s wishes. With this parable Jesus reaffirms his predilection for sinners who convert and teaches us that humility is necessary in order to accept the gift of salvation. St Paul too, in the passage from his Letter to the Philippians on which we are meditating today, urges us to be humble: “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit”, he writes, “but… let each of you… in humility count others better than yourselves” (Phil 2: 3). These are the same sentiments as those of Christ who, emptying himself of divine glory out of love for us, became a man and humbled himself even to dying on a Cross (cf. Phil 2: 5-8). The verb used – ekenôsen – means literally that he “emptied himself” and sheds clear light on the deep humility and infinite love of Jesus, the humble Servant par excellence. 

In reflecting on these biblical texts, I immediately thought of Pope John Paul I, the 30th anniversary of whose death we are commemorating today. John Paul I chose as his episcopal motto the same motto as St Charles Borromeo, namely: Humilitas. This single word sums up the essential of Christian life and indicates the indispensable virtue of those in the Church who are called to the service of authority. At one of the four General Audiences held during his extremely short Pontificate, he said, among other things, with that familiar tone that distinguished him: “I will just recommend one virtue so dear to the Lord. He said, “Learn from me who am meek and humble of heart’…. Even if you have done great things, say: “We are useless servants'”. And he observed: “On the contrary the tendency in all of us, is rather the opposite: to show off” (Homily, General Audience, 6 September 1978). Humility can be considered his spiritual testament. 

Because of this virtue of his, it only took 33 days for Pope Luciani to win people’s hearts. In his Addresses he always referred to events in practical life, from his family memories and from popular wisdom. His simplicity was a vehicle for a solid, rich teaching which, thanks to the gift of an exceptional memory and a vast knowledge, he embellished with numerous citations from ecclesiastical and secular writers. Thus, he was an incomparable catechist, following in the footsteps of St Pius X, who came from the same region and was his Predecessor first on the throne of St Mark and then on that of St Peter. “We must feel small before God”, he said during the same Audience. And he added, “I am not ashamed to feel like a child before his mother; one believes in one’s mother; I believe in the Lord, in what he has revealed to me” (ibid., p. 1). These words reveal the full depth of his faith. As we thank God for having given him to the Church and to the world, let us treasure his example, striving to cultivate his same humility which enabled him to talk to everyone, especially the small and the “distant”. For this, let us invoke Mary Most Holy, the humble Handmaid of the Lord. 

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The Lord’s Vineyard

Tuesday, 16 December 1997 | ADVENT MASS FOR THE STUDENTS
OF THE ROMAN STATE UNIVERSITIES

2. The Word of God proclaimed a few moments ago refers to the Lord’s vineyard, an evocative allegory that occurs frequently in the Gospels and is the main theme of today’s passage. What does the image of the vineyard call to mind? Following the Gospel texts, we could say that it represents the whole created cosmos which, through Christ’s coming, becomes God’s property in a special way. In fact, through Christ’s Redemption, the cosmos and man begin to belong to God in a new way. We can therefore say that in a certain sense Christmas is the holy day when the visible and the inanimate assume, on the basis of that event, a different and unexpected meaning, because “God”, as the Evangelist John reminds us, “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). Do not these words contain the pregnant meaning of the vineyard image, to which Jesus often refers in his preaching? 

Through the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, man and the cosmos can rejoice in discovering that it is they who are the “Lord’s vineyard”, the object of God’s saving love.

3. “Go and work in my vineyard!” (cf. Mt 21:28), says the father to his two sons in the Gospel parable, and he expects an answer from them: he is not satisfied with words; he wants an actual commitment. The two respond differently: the first says he is willing but then does nothing; the other apparently refuses his father’s invitation, but after some evasiveness does what he is asked. The Evangelist Matthew thus presents a typology of the attitudes towards God that men have taken down through history. The Gospel invitation to work in the Lord’s vineyard echoes in the lives and hearts of every man and woman, called to dedicate themselves actively to the divine vineyard and to become involved in the mission of salvation. In this parable each one of us can recognize his own personal experience. 

4. Dear friends, the university world you represent here is a particularly fertile ground for the development of the human talents which the Lord has given each individual for the good of all. By using them and developing them through study and research, whoever possesses them is capable of undertaking initiatives that can promote the authentic progress of the world. 

However, as the Second Vatican Council reminds us, “the advantages of human progress are fraught with grave temptations: the hierarchy of values has been disordered, good and evil intermingle, and every man and every group is interested only in its own affairs, not in those of others. So it is that the earth has not yet become the scene of true brotherhood; rather, man’s swelling power at the present time threatens to put an end to the human race itself” (Gaudium et spes, n. 37). 

5. Only when man, letting himself be guided by the divine Spirit, undertakes to enliven earthly affairs in view of God’s kingdom (cf. ibid., n. 72), does he co-operate in bringing about the authentic progress of humanity. By fostering the encounter with the Son of the living God, it is the Spirit who removes from man’s heart every intellectual presumption and leads him to the true good and to true wisdom, which is a gift to be sought and received with humility. As I wrote in the Letter to the Young People of Rome for the City Mission – it is up to you, dear young people, to listen to the Spirit of the Lord in order to release the fresh, generous cultural energies that the enthusiasm of your age can certainly muster. The Pope entrusts this task especially to you, as your vocation and service on the journey of preparation for the Great Jubilee of the third millennium. 

It corresponds, moreover, to the fitting efforts of the Italian Church to develop and make fruitful a cultural project with a Christian orientation.

Knowledge based on faith, in fact, has genuine cultural dignity. Knowledge of the faith illumines man’s search and makes it fully human because “it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh” as the Second Vatican Council teaches, “that the mystery of man truly becomes clear…. Christ, the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (ibid., n. 22).

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