Homily for 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 20, 2026
Is 55: 6-9
Matt 20: 1-16
Villa Maria, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

A medieval depiction of vineyard workers

“So high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Is 55: 9).

The prophet Isaiah announces redemption to Israel.  Israel had been devastated by war, defeat, exile, and the destruction of Jerusalem because they had abandoned the Lord.

Thru the prophet, the Lord calls them back; he “is generous in forgiving.”  Most people are not.  But the Lord is:  “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (55:8).  If a wicked person will forsake his wickedness, the Lord is near, ready to redeem, ready to save (55:7).

Jesus tells us a parable today about God’s generosity, his unimaginable mercy, his thinking very differently than we do.

The owner of a vineyard needs some day laborers, probably because it’s vintage time.  At dawn he goes to the village market, hires those he expects to need, and agrees with them for what our text calls “the usual daily wage” (Matt 20:2) for a laborer—a Roman denarius.  By our 21st-century American standards, that’s a pittance.  By a 3d-world standard, even today, it would suffice for a man to get his day’s bread and wine, maybe something also for his family.

The landowner goes out several times more.  Either his foreman has miscalculated the number of workers needed for the day, or the owner is prepared to hire more men than he needs because he knows they are in need.  He promises them only “what is just” (20:4).  He does this even at the last hour of the day, when the fellows in the marketplace must have despaired of getting a few cents for a bite to eat that day.

If the landowner is taking on men he doesn’t really need, he’s being generous and gracious.  He’s offering a little saving grace to the dignity of these men who are so dependent on day-to-day work, like those you’d have found at Home Depot before ICE made that a perilous gathering point.

But there’s more, as we hear when the foreman begins to pay everyone at the end of the day.  Altho the owner had promised to pay “what is just,” he doesn’t.  He gives all the laborers a full day’s pay, even tho only the 1st crew has earned it.  He surpasses justice by a wide margin.  Naturally, the earliest hires squawk, as most of us would.

But who can argue with the owner’s freedom to do as he wishes with his money?  Who of us can argue with the Lord’s ways not being like our ways, with his dispensing undeserved grace and mercy?  The 1st workers grumble, “You’ve made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat” (20:12).

Yes, he has.  Jesus introduced the parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers” (20:1).  God our Father is ready to pay the same heavenly reward to everyone who comes to his vineyard, to everyone who strives to live the Gospel.  Whether one has been a faithful Christian his or her entire life or has led a horrible life until a late-in-the-day conversion, our Father has a rich reward at hand and is generous in dispensing it.  “Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts; let him turn to the Lord for mercy, to our God, who is generous in forgiving” (Is 55:7).

The Laborers in the Vineyard
(Jacob Willemsz de Wet)

Let not anyone else grumble about it; if the Lord paid us what is just, what our sins deserve, we’d be lost—“bearing the day’s heat” for eternity.  Rather, let’s rejoice that our Father “did not abandon [us] to the domain of death” but “came in mercy to the aid of all” (EP IV) thru his Son, who rose from the dead and thereby “destroyed death and restored life” (ibid.).  Therefore, “Every day will I bless [him], and I will praise [his] name forever and ever” (Ps 145:2).