Pope: there are no unemployed in the Kingdom of God
During the Angelus, Pope Francis explained the parable of the day workers called up at different times but paid the same remuneration. "Jesus wants to open our hearts to the logic of the love of the Father, which is free and generous.” US missionary Stanley Francis Rother, killed in 1981 by death squads in Guatemala, is beatified.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – "In the Kingdom of God there are no unemployed. Everyone is called to do their part; and for everyone in the end there will be the reward that comes from divine justice - not human [justice], for our good fortune! – that is, the salvation that Jesus Christ has acquired for us with His death and resurrection. A salvation that is not deserved, but given. Salvation is free for "the last will be first, and the first will be last," said Pope Francis as he explained today’s Gospel (Mt 20:1-16, 25th Sunday Liturgical Year A) to pilgrims in St Peter's Square before the Angelus.
The evangelical page relates the parable of the landowner who at different times of the day looks for labourers to employ in his vineyard and at the end of the day gives everyone the same pay, even to those who worked only an hour.
"In fact, the landowner’s ‘injustice’ is used to provoke, in those listening to the parable, a move to the next level, because here Jesus does not want to talk about the problem of work and the proper wage, but about the Kingdom of God!"
"With this parable, Jesus wants to open our hearts to the logic of the love of the Father, which is free and generous. It is about letting oneself be amazed and fascinated by God’s ‘thoughts’ and ‘ways’, which, as the prophet Isaiah notes, are not our thoughts or ways (cf. Is 55: 8). Human thoughts are often marked by selfishness and personal gain, and our narrow and tortuous paths are not comparable to the Lord's broad and straight paths. He uses mercy, forgives broadly, is full of generosity and goodness that he pours onto each of us, opens to all boundless territories his love and grace, which alone can give the human heart the fullness of joy."
"Jesus wants us to contemplate the look of that landowner: the look with which he sees each of the labourers waiting for work, and he calls them to go to his vineyard. It is a look full of attention, of benevolence; it is a look that calls, invites to get up, to set off on the path, because he wants life for each of us, wants a full, committed life, saved from emptiness and inertia. God who does not exclude anyone, who wants each one to reach his or her fullness."
Following the Marian prayer and before the greetings to the various groups present, Francis said that "yesterday, in Oklahoma City (United States of America), Stanley Francis Rother was proclaimed Blessed. The missionary priest was killed in hatred of faith for his work of evangelisation and human promotion in favour of the poorest in Guatemala."
In 1968 Fr Rother (1935-1981) was sent as a priest to the mission in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, among the Tz'utujil Indians. He was killed by a death squad during the Efraín Ríos Montt regime. "May his heroic example,” said Francis, “help us to be brave witnesses to the Gospel, engaged in favour of the dignity of man."
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