25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A September 20, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
Jacinta and Marto were 9 and 10 years old when they died just two years after seeing Mary at Fatima. They are now canonized saints who enjoy the eternal reward of heavenly glory. Antoni of the desert lived to be105 years old and Charalambos to 113. Both men endured several decades of intense penance and prayer. Charalambos was even tortured and martyred at the end of his long life. Both men are also canonized saints who enjoy the eternal reward of heavenly glory.
Is it unfair? Unfair that the children who worked at their faith for 2 years received the same reward as men who worked at it for 100? Of course not! First of all, no one truly earns salvation. God saves us through his grace and mercy. He is also so generous that he allows us to participate in that reward. It’s like you giving your child money to buy you a gift. Ultimately your money is used to get you something, but you’re happy to include your child. So God gives us the gift of being able to strive, to cooperate with our salvation. So, we “work” at salvation, but that “work” at it is really His grace in us, so it’s still a gift.
The second thing is that being generous does not violate justice. When we say something is “unfair,” we mean that it is unjust. Justice is to give someone what is owed to them. The landowner in the parable gives the laborers exactly what he promised them and exactly what he owed them. It is not a violation of justice to give someone else more than he owes them if you still get what is owed to you. When we compare super old saints with super young ones, a lot of people would be okay with the fact that they all get to heaven.
But if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us would probably react like these laborers in their specific situation. It’s a temptation every human being faces, but it’s an especially strong temptation in our culture. Founded as a country focused on freedom and overthrowing tyranny, we Americans emphasize equality more than other cultures. Phrases like “equal rights” and “equal pay for equal work” are common. That’s not a bad thing. Our history is full of injustice and we still need to fix some of them, to correct inequalities in basic human rights. It is generous to overpay someone for their work, but that is not the same thing as deliberately underpaying someone else for that same work.
The problem is that our minds are muddled. Original sin darkened the human intellect; it’s really easy for us to confuse ideas, to conflate good and bad things. We see the good of overthrowing tyranny, but often go too far into rejecting legitimate authority. We see the good of equal rights but fail to see the bad of forcing “equal” outcomes. Jesus tells this parable because the people around him see the good of being fair, but they fail to see the good of charity and generosity.
In this parable and in many social movements, envy masquerades as fairness. Envy is a deadly sin; it is far, far worse than jealousy. Jealousy says “I want that thing that I don’t have.” Envy, however, says “I’m sad that that person has something I don’t.” Envy looks at a good thing and says “it is bad that they have a good thing.” Do you see how evil that is? To react to goodness as though it were bad? In fact, the more literal translation of the line, “are you envious because I am generous?” would be “is your eye evil because I am good?”
The old expression of “giving someone the evil eye” is a direct reference to this parable. To give someone the “evil eye” is to be envious, it is to want something bad to happen to someone just because they got a good thing you don’t have. Envy is to look at God’s goodness and react by choosing evil.
Y’all, that’s the unforgiveable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, the unforgiveable sin is to refuse forgiveness… but think about it… why would someone refuse forgiveness? Because they see God’s goodness – his mercy and infinite power – as something bad… as something they don’t want or as not good enough to help them. Envy, Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, refusing to accept forgiveness… all of these are rooted in the same sin of looking at God’s goodness and calling it bad or evil or weak.
Jealousy leads to conflict and discontent, but envy leads to hell. That should frighten you a little bit, it should make you say to yourself, “I don’t want to do that!” and look for ways to avoid envy. So, let’s consider three ways to avoid falling into this deadly sin.
The first is to simply be aware of what envy is and how it works. Remember, our intellect is darkened. “Satan masquerades as an angel of light,” scripture tells us. He preys upon our half-formed ideas of justice and our poorly considered instincts to make us conflate envy with fairness. So, learn to question your assumptions! Learn to reflect upon your reactions, emotions, and instincts. If you hear that a person you don’t like wins the lottery and that makes you sad, really look at why. Are you concerned that wealth will be bad for their soul or are you just being a brat because you think they get more than they deserve? When you hear that a rich and powerful person fails and falls on hard times and that makes you happy, evaluate that. Is it really because you love their soul and genuinely want them to encounter God? Or are you just glad they “got knocked down a peg?” Never, never, never allow yourself to look at a good thing as though it were evil.
The second thing is gratitude, though you could probably put it first. Practice looking at God’s goodness – at any goodness – and thanking God for it. This way, you’ll train your heart and mind to look for good and to be ready to see it as good and react to it as something good. Every night, spend a few minutes reflecting on the day looking for the good things and thanking God for them. It’s a key part of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s “examen prayer,” and St. Ignatius himself said it is the one prayer we should never miss. Practice gratitude and envy will not win.
The third thing is to trust God’s goodness more. St. Paul is among the greatest saints of all time, intelligent but also very very wise. And what does the holy, intelligent, and wise saint say today? “I do not know which I shall choose.” That’s right, the Saint Paul doesn’t know what to do. But he doesn’t seem worried about it. Why? Wouldn’t you worry if you didn’t know what God wanted?
Probably, yes. So why is Paul not worried? Because he trust God’s power and his goodness more than his own ability to figure out God’s plan. These workers grumble because they thought they knew the owner’s plan to pay them extra. When his plan didn’t match theirs, they were so focused on their own ideas that they completely missed what the owner was showing them. If they had seen the generosity, if they had reacted with trust in the goodness they just witnessed, maybe they would have had the humility to ask for more, instead of enviously demanding more for themselves… or worse, demanding less for others. Paul has seen God’s goodness and his powerful providence. He trusts that, even though he doesn’t exactly how and when God will reward him, God will be more than just, he will be generous and loving when the time comes.
Don’t try to outlawyer God. Don’t try to catch him in technicalities and minimums. See that He is Good, He is Generous, He is Love itself. Trust that goodness and “conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Do that and you won’t dare to get upset when others get more than they deserve. Why? Because instead of seeing it as a problem, you’ll see it for what it really is: a reminder that, if you let him, God will give you more than you deserve too.