By Deacon Frank Ringsmuth
This column was originally a homily written and preached by Deacon Ringsmuth. It has been edited for style, length and clarity.
Have you ever heard a child say, “That’s not fair!”?
When my children were young, there were times when one of them would come to me because something had happened that they thought was unfair. Maybe a brother or sister had taken something from them. Or another child got to make the choice of which game they would be playing. And they would come to me with an argument about what they believed was owed to them, saying, “That’s not fair, Dad!”
There is something almost universal about that reaction. Each of us is born with an innate sense of justice. We recognize that there should be a certain fairness in the way we are treated. And that instinct is not bad. In fact, it is part of the goodness of the human person, because God has created us with that sense of right and wrong.
But Jesus proposes a parable today that takes us somewhere beyond our ordinary understanding of fairness. The workers who had labored the entire workday in the vineyard were upset when the landowner gave those who had worked only one hour the same daily wage. We can understand their reaction. But Jesus does not ask us to decide whether or not they have a legitimate complaint. He asks, instead, a deeper question: “Are you envious because I am generous?”
It seems to me that whenever Jesus tells a parable, he includes the listeners somewhere in the story, and we may feel some discomfort, or even shock, as we recognize ourselves in that story. And that discomfort may be exactly what is needed to trigger a change in our thinking. Perhaps today’s parable does that for us. It invites us to look honestly at those places in our own lives where we may be keeping score, comparing what we have received with what someone else has received, or wondering whether we have received what we deserve. Jesus asks us to look beyond those calculations: What if God’s generosity is greater than our sense of fairness? What if the very thing that unsettles us in this parable is actually an invitation to discover the mystery of God’s grace?
In our personal sense of justice, we have a tendency to think in terms of what we deserve. So we “keep score.” We may compare what we have received with what someone else has received. “I worked harder.” “I have been faithful longer.” And sometimes, without realizing it, our relationship with God can begin to sound like a transaction: “I have done this, therefore God owes me that.”
But the Gospel invites us to move beyond that way of thinking. Why? Because God is not arbitrary. He does not ignore justice. The ultimate reason for God’s action is not merely justice. It is love. And love gives according to need, not simply according to merit. God gives more grace to the one who seems to deserve it less, because that person may need it more. That is the scandal of grace.
And perhaps this is one of the hardest things for us to accept about God: his generosity is not limited by our calculations. At times, any of us can be tempted to look at our lives through the lens of what we have given and what we have received. When life does not unfold as we expect, we can begin keeping a ledger. “What have I done for God? What has God done for me? What do I deserve?”
But the Gospel invites us to put down the ledger. Because the truth is that everything we have is, in reality, a gift. Our life, our faith, the people who love us and even the ability to begin again after we have failed, are gifts of grace. Once we begin to see our lives through that lens, something inside us begins to change. We begin to see more clearly. We begin to recognize more deeply the goodness that has already been placed in our hands. And gratitude begins to grow.
An example to ponder is the conversion of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a girl whose mother died when she was just four years old. In her autobiography, “Story of a Soul,” Thérèse describes an experience that happened on Christmas Eve in 1886, when she was 13 years old. She and her father had just returned home from Midnight Mass, and, as was their family custom, Thérèse would soon be opening the gifts that had been placed in her shoes. As she was going upstairs, she overheard her father say to one of her sisters, in a tone of weariness, that this would be the last year for such things. He was tired, and he was expressing his desire that his youngest daughter would finally grow up.
Well, Thérèse overheard him, and she was hurt. She went upstairs, ready to break into a flood of tears. But at that moment, a miracle of grace changed her hypersensitivity into a mature determination to respond in love rather than in self-pity. She went back downstairs and became the one who brought joy to her father. Years later, she would look back on that Christmas Eve and call it the grace of her complete conversion.
So, what changed? Her circumstances had not changed. She herself had changed. Grace changed the way she saw herself and the people around her. And that is what God wants to do in each of us. His grace does not simply help us to endure the circumstances of our lives. His grace can transform the way we see those circumstances, the way we see other people, and even the way we understand ourselves. Grace can lead us toward greater gratitude, greater maturity, and a greater willingness to give of ourselves in love.
This is the path of grace, but it is not always easy, especially when we face a genuine loss. And sometimes God’s grace is at work in us precisely in those moments when something familiar is being taken from us, inviting us to trust him even when we cannot yet see what he may be bringing forth. As you know, we are living through a time of significant change in our parishes. Of the six worship spaces in our Area Catholic Community, two will be closing next year, and various aspects concerning the life we have known as a community are about to change.
For some parishioners, these are places that have been part of family life for generations: where people were baptized, where children received First Communion, where marriages were celebrated and loved ones were buried. They are places where friendships were formed and people carried one another through difficult seasons. And even for those whose own worship spaces will remain open, the closing of two churches affects the whole community. There is a real sense of loss on the horizon, and we need not minimize our feelings. But all that we have received through these communities is not contained in a building. Our relationships, our memories, our compassion and our desire to serve others are gifts of grace, and they do not become less real because the structures around us will be changing.
Jesus invites us to trust that his grace is not confined to one building or one way of being together. The Lord who has been present among us in these churches will continue to be present with us. The love cultivated here, the friendships that sustain us, and the faith nurtured within these communities are not things that have to disappear. They can become gifts that we carry forward. And perhaps, in ways that we cannot yet see, God can use this moment of change to deepen something in us: to deepen our gratitude for what we have received, to deepen our love for one another, and to open our hearts to new ways of serving him and of serving others.
We don’t know precisely what that will look like, and our questions will keep surfacing. But perhaps the prayer of faith is not, “Lord, make me stop caring about what I am losing,” but rather, “Lord, please help me to recognize the grace you have already given, and show me how to carry it into whatever comes next.” That transformation won’t happen simply because we tell ourselves to be more grateful. It will happen through God’s grace.
And that is why we come here. The Eucharist is the greatest reminder that we live by God’s gift. We do not come to the altar because we have earned Jesus. We come with empty hands, and he fills them, giving us his own Body and Blood, the grace of his divine life.
So when we come forward to receive our Lord in the Eucharist, can we bring the places where we have been feeling, “That’s not fair”? Can we offer him our disappointments, our questions about why life may not be turning out just as we had planned? Perhaps Jesus is gently asking us what he asked the workers: “Are you envious because I am generous?” Perhaps he is inviting us to look again, not simply at what we think we deserve, but at what we have already received. Because when we see our lives through the eyes of grace, gratitude becomes possible and gratitude can change us.
The child who once said, “That’s not fair, Dad,” can grow into an adult who hears the words of Jesus and realizes, “Father, everything I have is your gift!” Perhaps that is the grace Jesus wants to give us today: that we might stop keeping score, that we may stop asking what we are owed, and that, with grateful hearts, we will be moved to see how much we have already received. Because when we know that we have received everything as gift, we are finally free to give ourselves as gift.
That is the way of Jesus. That is the way of his Kingdom. And that is the grace we receive every time we come to the altar.
Deacon Frank serves as a permanent deacon at the All Called to Christ Area Catholic Community, which includes the parishes of St. Anthony, Holy Spirit, Christ Church Newman Center, St. Augustine, St. John Cantius and St. Mary’s Cathedral in St. Cloud.
Above photo: Adobe Stock