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I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
- Helen Keller What might this mean for you today?
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Daily Readings
Judges 9:6-15
Psalm 21:2-3,
4-5, 6-7 Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus said to his disciples: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner going out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard. He made an agreement with the workers for one denarius a day, and sent them to his vineyard. Going out at about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place and said to them, “You go to my vineyard too and I
will give you a fair wage.” So they went. At about the sixth hour and again at about the ninth hour, he went out and did the same. Then at about the eleventh hour he went out and found more men standing round, and he said to them, “Why have you been standing here idle all day?” “Because no one has hired us” they answered. He said to them, “You go into my vineyard too.” In the evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his bailiff, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the
last arrivals and ending with the first.” So those who were hired at about the eleventh hour came forward and received one denarius each. When the first came, they expected to get more, but they too received one denarius each. They took it, but grumbled at the landowner. “The men who came last” they said “have done only one hour, and you have treated them the same as us, though we have done a heavy day’s work in all the heat.” He answered one of them and said, “My friend, I am not being unjust
to you; did we not agree on one denarius? Take your earnings and go. I choose to pay the last comer as much as I pay you. Have I no right to do what I like with my own? Why be envious because I am generous?” Thus the last will be first, and the first, last.’
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 20:1-16 (The first and the
last) At first glance, there seems to be an injustice which Jesus glosses over in today’s reading. Although each group gets what it has agreed upon, it seems the partiality shown the last workers is a slight against the long-suffering group. This is a parable about the kingdom of God, however, which emphasizes that being with God will be reward enough for anyone, no matter how much the person may “deserve"
adlmittance. • Do you think it fair that the good thief on the cross was promised salvation by Jesus when so many of us have to work our whole lives through in faithfulness? • “A person is not a Christian if his first concern is pay,” William Barclay wrote. What should be the first concern of a Christian when considering
employment?
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK VI: OF THE EXERCISES OF LOVE IN PRAYER
Complacency for St. Francis de Sales means contentment to simply be with God, to rest in God. Chapter 6: That contemplation
is made without labour, which is the third difference between it and meditation. But take which of these three ways you will, contemplation has still this excellency that it is made with delight, for it supposes that we have found God and his holy love, that we enjoy it and delight in it, saying: I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him: and I will not let him go. [287] In which it differs from meditation, which almost always
is performed with difficulty, labour and reasoning; our mind passing in it from consideration to consideration, searching in many places either the well-beloved of her love, or the love of her well-beloved. Jacob labours in meditation to obtain Rachel, but in contemplation he rejoices with her, forgetting all his labour. The divine lover like a shepherd, and indeed he is one, prepared a sumptuous banquet according to the country fashion for his sacred spouse, which he so described that
mystically it represented all the mysteries of man's redemption. I am come into my garden, said he, O my sister, my spouse, I have gathered my myrrh, with aromatical spices; I have eaten the honey-comb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk; eat, O friends, and drink, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved! [288] Theotimus, Ah! when was it, I pray you, that our Saviour came into his garden, if not when he came into his mother's purest, humblest and sweetest womb, replenished with all the
flourishing plants of holy virtues? And what is meant by our Saviour's gathering his myrrh with his perfumes, except that he joined suffering to suffering until death, even the death of the cross, heaping by that means merit upon merit and treasures upon treasures, to enrich his spiritual children? And how did he eat his honey-comb with his honey, but when he lived a new life, reuniting his soul, more sweet than honey, to his pierced and wounded body, with more holes than a honeycomb? And when
ascending into heaven he took possession of all the surroundings and dependencies of his divine glory, what other thing did he if not mix the exhilarating wine of the essential glory of his soul, with the delightful milk of the perfect felicity of his body, in a more excellent manner than hitherto he had done?
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