September 20
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Saint Andrew Kim Taegon
and Companions
Today's Readings:
Isaiah 55:6-9
Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a / Matthew 20:1-16a
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| Image taken by me, enhanced by Google AI. |
Today’s Gospel:
Matthew 20:1-16a
(The Workers in the Vineyard)
“The kingdom of
heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his
vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into
his vineyard. Going out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the
marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give
you what is just.’ 5 So they went off. And he went out
again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about
five o’clock, he found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you
stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said
to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’ When it was evening the owner of the
vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay,
beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ When those who had started
about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So, when the first
came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the
usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying,
‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who
bore the day’s burden and the heat.’ He said to one of them in reply, ‘My
friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily
wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same
as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious
because I am generous?’ Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be
last.”
Reflection:
Today we remember
Saint Andrew Kim Taegon, the first native-born Korean priest, and the
companions who died alongside him and thousands of other Korean Catholics in
one of the most severe and prolonged persecutions the Church has ever endured,
a Church that, remarkably, began not with foreign missionaries but with Korean
laypeople who discovered Catholic texts, taught themselves the faith, and only
later sent word asking for priests to come and confirm what they had already
begun believing. Andrew himself, ordained in secret and smuggled back into a
country where being Catholic meant almost certain death, wrote to his flock before
his execution that he was not afraid, because for him, as for Paul, to live was
Christ and to die was gain. Isaiah's words today explain exactly the kind of
faith that could produce an underground Church like Korea's, built entirely on
its own initiative before any missionary ever arrived: my thoughts are not your
thoughts, my ways not your ways, says the Lord. God's ways of growing His
Church in Korea looked nothing like anyone expected, and yet the fruit was some
of the most courageous faith the modern Church has witnessed.
That same divine unpredictability sits at the center of the Gospel today. A
landowner hires workers throughout the day, some at dawn, some at the eleventh
hour, and pays every one of them the same generous wage, provoking outrage from
those who worked longest. Are you envious because I am generous? the landowner
asks. Korea's Catholics were, in a sense, the latecomers of the vineyard,
receiving the fullness of the faith centuries after it had spread across Europe,
Asia and elsewhere, and yet God poured out extraordinary grace on them,
producing a Church strong enough to endure decades of persecution and thousands
of martyrs on its own soil, with almost no outside help in its earliest years.
God's generosity doesn't follow the ledger the first workers expect.
That should sting a little on any resentment you're carrying over who seems to
have received more than you, sooner than you, or more easily than you, the
sense that your own long labor somehow entitles you to more of God's favor than
someone who arrived late and got the same grace. Andrew Kim Taegon didn't
measure his faith against how long the Church had existed in his country. He
simply gave his life for it, fully, the moment it was asked of him. What grudge
about fairness have you been nursing that Andrew's total surrender puts to
shame?
There's an old image at Toul in Lorraine, Our Lady of the Silver Foot, who is
said to have warned a woman of a coming betrayal and left behind a foot
transformed to silver as proof of her care, protection given quietly, before
disaster could strike. Korea's underground Church survived in exactly that kind
of hidden protection for generations, growing in secret long before the wider
world knew it existed. Andrew Kim Taegon walked back into a country that would
kill him for it, trusting that the same quiet providence that had built the
Korean Church from nothing would not abandon it now, and it didn't.
What grudge about fairness- who got more, sooner, or easier than you- have you been quietly nursing? Andrew Kim Taegon gave everything without asking
whether it was fair. What would it look like for you to stop counting and
simply give what's asked of you today?
Rosary Man Jim 🌹
Freely given. Freely
shared.
