In the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
My dearly beloved in Our Lord,
Many times in the Gospel and in the Liturgy
things are about TIME. On the first Sunday of Advent, St Paul says: “Brethren,
knowing the time, that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep.” (Rom
13:11) Today, as we resume purple vestments for three Sundays preceding Ash
Wednesday, the Gospel is about those who are called to work in the Lord’s
vineyard at different hours of the day.
In an Offertory which occurs several times
during the year, and in the Nuptial Mass, the Church prays the Psalm verses:
“In Thee, O Lord, have I put my trust; I said, Thou art my God; my times are in
Thy hands.” (Ps 30:15-16)
The servants are praised if they expect the
return of their master, even if he comes late, during the second or the third
vigil of the night (Lk 12:38). And in the parable of the five prudent and the
five silly virgins, the latter are excluded from the marriage celebrations
because they arrive late through their imprudent comportment (Mt 25:10).
TIME is something fascinating for the
Christian philosopher. St Augustine has a long reflection on this topic in book
11 of his Confessions.
It is so fascinating and intriguing not only
because for us it begins and it ends, with our birth and our earthly death, but
also because its perception can vary enormously: a moment of joy or of intense
suffering can seem like an eternity; or a long interval of time can seem very
brief in hindsight.
TIME does not exist in God. His throne is
high above time and space which are but His creatures. We call God’s
timelessness eternity. The Angels have their own “time” which the Scholastics
call “aevum”, something between time and eternity. Since the Angels are
creatures, they do not participate in God’s eternity properly speaking; they
have a beginning, though not in time. They are subject to causality,
and that has a lot to do with the nature and properties of TIME.
This brings us back to the Gospel.
Those laborers who show themselves rebellious
at the end of today’s parable, incarnate the idea of “time is money”. [We see
nowadays how silly this principle is: Many people spend their entire time
working, but they still cannot make a decent living by it. We won’t elaborate
on this problem today.] All workers who have answered the call to work in the
vineyard receiving a penny for the day, simply means that theessential
reward, namely eternal beatitude in Heaven, is the same for all those who
answer God’s call to be children of God, and who persevere in this work. “But
as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them
that believe in his name… who are born… of God.” (Jn 1:12.13) The accidental
reward, the degree of beatitude, is different in each Angel and in each
human soul in Heaven. “One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the
moon, and another the glory of the stars. For star differeth from star in
glory.” (1Cor 15:41)
“In Thee, O Lord, have I put my trust; I
said, Thou art my God; my times are in Thy hands.” This puts us right into the
heart of today’s problems! In all areas, man has decided to replace God
rather than to submit to his Creator, Redeemer and Judge humbly and with filial
trust. Man thinks he can “create” his own reality. Even the most basic things
are not beyond his pretense to be his own master and commander: think of “the
metaverse”, NFTs, genderism, conceptionism, abortionism, divorce, just to name
a few outstanding subjects. The incapacity or unwillingness to accept
providential facts, like constraints of time and place, is but the poisoned
cherry on the unsavory cake of “modern” life and thinking.
Like in all things, God entrusts the good use
or administration of time to man. But while He oversees the whole, great
picture, we are immersed in time and oversee very little indeed. Therefore our
task consists mostly in following suit with what Divine Providence puts on our
way. We find that very hard many times because we are so imbued with false or
half-baked ideas like that of “freedom”.
The workers in today’s parable are free to
choose – in a certain way: They accept the call of the master who goes out to
hire workers, or they refuse it. The Gospel does not talk about those latter
ones, but there certainly have been some who did not go with him, for whatever
reason. Once they have given their consent, things follow their natural course.
Maybe one or two among those called early, have walked out from the job,
finding it too hard? They did not receive the reward agreed for the day’s work.
Then all those who have persevered in the labor, receive their recompense. It
is just, as the master’s steward explains: “Friend, I do thee no wrong;
didst thou not agree with me for a penny?” It is equitable because
justice is respected; and the master is free to accord more to those who have
labored for a shorter while: “I will also give to this last even as to thee.
Or, is it not lawful for me to do what I will? Is thy eye evil, because I am
good?”
Our having followed God’s call to be His
children was our free choice. Once we have made this choice, we are not
morally free to revoke this choice without the direst consequences!
An unmarried person or a widower is free to
contract a marriage. But as of the moment of the wedding he is not free to
retract his consent. There is no other way out of marriage but death!
Our free choice is meritorious because God in
his goodness has chosen to reward our otherwise rather negligible efforts. As
good children we should be content and happy about whatever Our Father who is
in Heaven chooses to give us. But often enough we behave like ungrateful and
rotten brats who reject a gift and demand something else, or more.
Above all, each of those men had to answer
the master’s call in his time, not in their time. We should always
consider that time is not so much ours, but God’s. Then we will find it
easier to accept how and when things happen: All in God’s own time!
St Paul beautifully comments on all this in
the Epistle: “For I
would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the
cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized, in the
cloud, and in the sea: And did all eat the same spiritual food, And all drank
the same spiritual drink; (and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed
them, and the rock was Christ.)” His conclusion is terrible, but true still:
“But with most of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in
the desert.” Only two of the original crowd who were called out of slavery in
Egypt entered the Holy Land because they served and honored God at all times,
Joshua and Caleb! Two out of over a million who died in the desert…
Let us stand by the Cross of Our
Lord even if sometimes we find it scandalous or crazy (cf 1Cor 1:23).
Let us make our own the thoughts and
sentiments of Holy Church who prays, in today’s Collect: We are justly
afflicted for our sins – may we be mercifully delivered for the
glory of God’s name.
In the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost.
P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski
