Seek a Deeper Relationship With God To Better Comprehend His Love
25th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year A
Often times, my brothers and sisters, we are like the Israelites in today’s first reading; we see everything exclusively from a human perspective. We think of God and what happens in our lives only in a human way. We do not see how God loves each one of us infinitely and arranges everything in our lives in order to bring us closer to Him.
Through the prophet Isaiah, God tells us: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.” Today’s Gospel about the landowner and his workers confirms this passage. Because those who worked longer hours looked at their lives and the landowner from only a human point of view, they were resentful that they had worked a longer day and ungrateful for what they had received. They were like the Prodigal Son’s older brother who was angry that his brother was given a goat and thrown a party. Both the jealous workers and the older brother did not see see that they had received additional privilege to be and live in the Father’s presence for a longer amount of time.
So often we look at our relationship with God not as a relationship, but as a transaction: If I avoid sin, then God will make my life easy. If I do many things for God, then I will go to heaven. But this misses the point: life is not about meriting God’s grace or just avoiding sin. Life is about having a relationship with God and growing in a deeper knowledge of His Love. If the workers had looked at everything through the eyes of faith, then they would have discovered that God’s heart is unimaginably generous and full of love. God loves the sinner as much as the saint, and He is ready to pour out His love in whatever way necessary in order to begin and remain a relationship with us.
If our end goal is life is not a deep relationship with God, then we miss the point of being Catholic altogether. We do not understand or see how, regardless of how long or in what ways we work in God’s vineyard the Church, God has us here most of all because He wants a relationship with us. Everything else is secondary.
Yours in Christ,
Father Arthur
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Lectionary 133
Tags: #arthurmarat, #arturmarat, #godslove, #grace, #homily, #love, #olw, #olwparish
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