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
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