Fruits of our deeds

How do we regard the world where God has placed us? Each one might have a different answer to the question. It all depends. Some who have every material thing they want in life might feel as lucky as the jackpot winner in million-million, game ka na ba? Some would not feel as lucky; they feel the world has not been kind to them.

Life is not a game of chance. There is no freedom in a game of chance. When Jesus compared our life to a vineyard, what He really wanted to say is that each one of us who make up the vineyard has a job to do, each one working to produce grapes fit to be made into rich wine. The more we work, the more we make actual whatever potential the Creator has endowed us with. In this actualization, we see our persons clearly under newer and newer aspects in the midst of varied activities in the state, in our families, in society. In creating for ourselves new fields of action, in being busy contriving new forms of activity, we realize ourselves.

We are all beneficiaries of the Lord’s bounty in His vineyard. He did say, "What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done" (Is 5:4)? We do not leave the care of His vineyard to chance. The vineyard will surely thrive if we work well to bring about its increase in output. Some of us will simply not work; we are sometimes mired in the listlessness of inaction. We are foolish enough to think that achievement through work is but an illusion. We often lose that effort to clear up all obstruction from our path of activity. Let us not busy ourselves bickering with one another. Let us rather attend to our immediate duties, our work for the common good, assigned by the Lord Himself to us, the job God want us to do, that by which we will manifest Him. That is why we should be careful that whatever we do is an obedience to His Law and in conformity to His Holy Will.

God forbid that we become useless people in the Lord's vineyard such as those from whom He will take away the hedge to be thrown for grazing and trampled upon. Let us ask the Lord for the joy in action. That joy which is like the peasant who tills the hard earth which yields the golden corn; like, too, the joy of a man who displaces the entangled forest, smooths the stony ground, and clears for himself a homestead, his joy enfolding him in orderliness and peace. Oh Lord, grant us the joy of newly awakened powers in the utter fulfillment of yielding the best fruits realized in action and in the whole of our everyday work, in noble deeds, in very beneficence which seeks to give expressions to You, Lord of the vineyard.

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Matthew 21:33-43.