Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Gospel Sunday is the familiar story about the farm owner who hires laborers 'at the usual daily wage' in the morning and others later in the day and then 'pays them (all) the same.' Jesus says this is 'like the kingdom of heaven'. As the story is placed in a sequence with Peter deifying Christ and then arguing with him when He will go to Jerusalem and be killed, I think it can easily be seen as Jesus saying that Jews are rewarded by God for their service but that those who listen to Christ now 'late' in time will be also, and in fact 'the last shall be first.' But the homily is never that perhaps because, even though it leaves the Christians first, the Jews would still be rewarded, a historically controversial idea for a Roman prelate. The theoretical idea would be acceptable, it seems to me, with the attitude of the current German pope whose attitude may be in reaction to war time atrocities but specific theorems based on the new axiom of small 'c' catholic inclusiveness await. This came up in commentary about 'The Eastern Front.'

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