Homily for the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Enduring Lessons of the Parable Of The Landowner

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, September 20, 2026

Today’s Gospel is called “The Workers in the Vineyard.” In it, Jesus narrates the parable of the landowner who hires people at different times of the day, and when it was time to pay, everyone received the same wage. Who is the landowner in the story? God alone! God is the landowner. He created heaven and earth and everything in them. Our very life, breath, being, all of it, comes from God. God is the original and primary owner of everything we own in this world. That's why everything we are and have ought to be used to honor and glorify God. 

From our perspective and from a practical standpoint, the landowner’s actions seem unjust, unfair, and wrong. Some might say that God is foolish for deciding to pay everyone the same regardless of their level of work. Others will argue that what the landowner has done here is a terrible business practice. However, it’s important to remember who God is. God is that being, that reality, who possesses complete knowledge of everything. God knows everything about everything. Our understanding of what is just, fair, and right is very limited in both depth and scope. In contrast, God’s knowledge encompasses everything, making our understanding like a tiny drop of water. I tell you, what we can see from God's viewpoint is laughably small. 

First spiritual lesson: God is kind and merciful. He is compassionate toward everyone, no matter when they choose to turn to Him. God is in the business of saving His children and does not turn back on them. Remember the parable of the Prodigal Son. After wasting his share of his father’s estate, he returned home thinking he was not worthy to be called a son. But to his greatest shock, he was received by a joyful father. This is the true and living God. Our God is patient, kind, and merciful. God deeply desires to have his children home. Anyone who returns to him,  no matter how late, would be welcomed. 

The second spiritual lesson. In the great Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). But the resentment we feel towards the latecomers, those who worked for just an hour in the Lord’s vineyard, reveals something significant: that we are still imperfect, not yet fully loving God and our neighbors. Could you imagine the great Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the disciple of perfect love, frowning her face and showing resentment simply because a sinner was forgiven, healed, and delivered into heaven at their deathbed? That won’t happen. The same Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who loved exceedingly and cared for everyone—Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, etc. would be overjoyed to welcome anyone into heaven, even those who came in at the last hour. That’s the nature of true love. If God’s actions are unjust, then you are unjust. If they are unfair, then you are unfair. If they are wrong, then you are the one at fault. In Isaiah 55:6-9, God says, “…my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.”

The third spiritual lesson: In the parable, the landowner hired workers at different times of day: some at dawn, others around nine o’clock, some at noon, some at three o’clock, and a few near sunset at five o’clock. What is the common movement of all the workers? They left behind their idleness —call it spiritual dormancy, spiritual laziness, spiritual sit-and-look, spiritual uselessness — and responded to the call of the landowner—God. This is the call-and-response model on full display. What’s the message here? When God calls, drop everything and follow him without reservation, for nothing could be more important. And God is in the business of calling people everywhere to come to him. That many people are staying away from religion does not mean God has stopped calling. That Catholics are staying away from Sunday Mass does not mean that God has stopped calling. In fact, God is calling out louder today. But many have stuffed their ears with worldly noise. We distract ourselves from attending to the great questions of the world, our existence, the purpose of life, etc. But in the recesses of our hearts, God calls and calls. But many choose to ignore him. Today’s Gospel should not be understood as suggesting that everyone will be saved on the final day, a theological position known as apocatastasis, which the Catholic Church has already classified as a heresy. 

In one of my homilies, I mentioned that salvation occurs when God’s persistent desire for us meets our own persistent longing for Him. The primacy of grace emphasizes that God always takes the first step. God always initiates the process. Divine grace comes first, but human free will needs to cooperate. As Saint Augustine said, “God who created us without us cannot save us without us.” 

God bless you!