25th Sunday Ordinary Time September 20, 2026

Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9 | Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a | Matthew 20:1-16

The Gospel shows us people who are comparing themselves with one another, wondering how come the other person got a better deal on salvation than we did. There is no great justice in life! We do not have to live long lives to find that out! Some people are born into families with very little suffering. Others come from families that seem only to suffer. Some people are born into families that lack nothing of the material goods of this world. Other people are born into families that are poor and starving and nothing seems to change that. We are not given our choice of families—at least so we Christians believe—but arrive in this world and find ourselves in a situation which we have not chosen.

We learn to choose as we grow, but our choices are always influenced by the families in which we find ourselves and by our own previous choices as we begin to make such choices. This reality “situates” our freedom in the concrete world. The human experience, and not just the Christian experience, is that we do always choose that which is best for us. Christ comes into the world to bring us salvation: the possibility of choosing for God and the possibility of our lives being changed for the better by God’s love (grace).

No matter what country or family we have been born into, we humans find ourselves beset by the challenges of living and of loving. We make mistakes, we choose poorly, we are attracted to things and to people that are not always good for us—and on and on and on. God knows all of this and loves us all. God invites us to share in the divine life and to do that, we must begin to cooperate with His grace and love and work in our lives. We must begin to accept that God’s ways are not our ways, and our thoughts are not always his thoughts. Let us ask God today for the grace to see a bit more as He sees and to think a bit more as He thinks. May He transform us so that we may become all love.