After graduation, Johnny joined his father’s business and was given a major responsibility in running the business. He was determined to make more money, not only for his father, but for his own future. He refused to even consider the employees’ continuing appeals for higher wages and human benefits due to the high prices of prime commodities. Instead, he cut down the number of employees to maximize the company’s profits. The ten workers who ended up jobless appealed to Johnny’s father, who approached him to reconsider the matter. Johnny’s heartless answer: "Trust me, Dad. I know what I am doing." That was Johnny!
In that very same class in college was another young man named Pete. He had felt disenchanted with his institutional religion. There seemed to be a gap between the institution and his generation. He was not touched by the routine rituals in church, which he found kind of irrelevant. As a consequence, he received the Sacraments less and less. Not only that. He found his theology classes boring and almost got failing grades.
After graduation, he landed a job as an assistant manager of a small factory. There, he saw with his own eyes how poorly the workers were being treated by the factory owner. They were underpaid, to begin with, and the physical facilities in the factory were very unhealthy. Pete’s heart reached out to them, and he had sleepless nights out of personal concern for them.
At the risk of his own job, Pete made courageous and persistent representations to the owner of the factory. With deep compassion in his heart, he spent many weeks of efforts to really open the eyes and heart of the employer. Until lo and behold, the employer began to really listen. At first, he threatened to dismiss Pete from his job. But God’s ways are not our ways. One step at a time, the physical conditions of the factory were greatly improved, and the wages of the workers raised to the level of human decency. As a result, the profits of the company were considerably lessened; thus, social justice prevailed. Indeed, Pete was the John the Baptist of that company!
Johnny and Pete are just two of the many contemporary incarnations of those two sons who were singled out by Jesus in the parable of today’s Gospel reading (Mt. 21: 28-32). Pete is a son of God. Johnny is definitely not. The spiritual twist in the lives of Johnny and Pete is too obvious to miss. Deeds more than words. The spirit of the law more than the letter of the law. This is what authentic love is all about. And Jesus lived this to the hilt in His own person, as recorded in today’s Second Reading:
"Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus – who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of the death, even death on a cross." (Phil. 2: 5-8).
Yes. Love hurts. But it saves. And it leads to a new life. The triumph of discipleship in Christ. We do not have to wait for our literal, mortal death to experience new life. Our current life on earth is an on-going cycle of Passion-Death-Resurrection, if we are like Pete. God’s kingdom is in the here-and-now, not just in the there-and-then. We are continually experiencing the "already" and the "not-yet," until that final breath that leads us to life eternal.