A landowner goes back to the market at five o'clock, hires the men still standing there, and at sunset pays them a full day's wage while the dawn crew watches. Isaiah had said why that stings: my thoughts are not your thoughts. Gregory the Great read the hours of that day as the ages of a life, Cyril of Alexandria as the ages of the world, and Chrysostom refused to let anyone push the grumbling past what a parable can bear. What follows works through all four readings, with Jerome and Fulgentius on "abundantly pardon," Aquinas on why a king may give what a magistrate may not, and a Philippians passage that runs on its own track and says so.
The Readings
First Reading: Isaiah 55:6-9
Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18
Every day I will bless thee, and praise thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.
The Lord is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings. The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.
Second Reading: Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a
...that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.
Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you stand firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel...
Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16a
"For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place; and to them he said, 'You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.' So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing; and he said to them, 'Why do you stand here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You go into the vineyard too.' And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, 'Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.' And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the householder, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you, and go; I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?' So the last will be first, and the first last."
Scriptural Analysis
Isaiah 55:6-9: Seek The Lord While He May Be Found
Chapter 55 closes the Book of Consolation (Isaiah 40-55), addressed to Judah in Babylon, and it closes with an open door. It starts with a street vendor's cry, "every one who thirsts, come to the waters" (Isaiah 55:1), moves to the everlasting covenant promised to David (55:3), and only then, in our verses, turns from invitation to demand. Aquinas lays the structure out the way a preacher wants it: the counsel to seek (v. 6), the manner of seeking, the fruit, and the obstacle removed. The manner has two halves, and he reads them precisely. "Let the wicked forsake his way" is the man sinning against God; "the unrighteous man his thoughts" is the man sinning against his neighbor. The fruit is mercy, "for he is bountiful, that is, of manifold mercy, to forgive." And verse 8 clears away the one thing that could block it, which Aquinas glosses in God's own voice: "you are wicked, I am loving; you think of vengeance, I think of mercy."[1]
"While he may be found" is a deadline, and the Fathers heard it as one. Jerome takes the phrase as "while you are in the body and as long as an opportunity for penitence is provided," and adds a correction the exiles needed: seek him in faith, wherever you happen to be. He also refuses to let seeking stand by itself. Calling on the Lord while he is near does nothing "unless the ungodly also leave their former ways and leave the old ways of thinking for those of the Lord."[2] The Navarre commentary reads the whole unit as the condition of return: to go home to Judah the people first have to go home to God, and the call to repentance is grounded on the goodness of the one who "will abundantly pardon." It quotes Augustine on the same urgency. God promises forgiveness to the one who converts, but "he does not promise tomorrow for your delays."[3]
"Abundantly pardon" is the hinge of the reading. The Hebrew attaches the verb "to multiply" to forgiveness: he will make pardon plentiful. Fulgentius of Ruspe, writing in sixth-century North Africa, gave it the line I'd put in the homily: "In this 'abundantly,' nothing is lacking. Here mercy is omnipotent, and omnipotence is merciful." Theodoret of Cyr pictures the movement as a man turning around on the road to show God "your face, not your back." And Chrysostom, writing to a young monk who had fallen, draws the sharpest pastoral conclusion from verse 8. Since God created us for blessing and does everything toward that end, what provokes him most is our unwillingness to change. "To sin may be a merely human failing, but to continue in the same sin ceases to be human and becomes altogether devilish."[4]
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