Everything is there for the asking; nothing can be bought

25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Isa 55:6-9
Second Reading: Phil 1:20-24, 27
Gospel Reading: Mt 20:1-16

In C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce, a man about to enter heaven is affronted to find Len, who was hanged for murder, already there ahead of him.

“Look at me, now,” the man protests. “I gone straight all my life. I don’t say I was a religious man and I don’t say I had no faults, far from it. But I done my best all my life, see? I never asked for anything that wasn’t mine by rights ... I got to have my rights same as you, see?”

“Oh, no!” Len answers. “It’s not so bad as that. I haven’t got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You’ll get something far better. Never fear. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.”

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” God reminds us. We see an example in Jesus’ parable of the landowner paying his labourers more than they deserve. God does not owe any of us anything, Jesus implies; everything we have and are, we have and are by his sheer graciousness.

Grace comes from the Latin gratia. One form of the word is gratis, which has passed into English unchanged. It means: free; for nothing; costing nothing; given without recompense. Our word gratuity comes from it: a payment made freely, not part of the price. So does our word gratuitous, which means: got or given free, not earned or paid for.

The dictionary definition of grace is: favour; benignant regard or its manifestation on the part of a superior. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines it as “favour: the free and undeserved help God gives us to respond to his call” to become his children, “partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.”

God’s favour is utterly free: we can respond to it or refuse it, but we cannot deserve it, earn it, or demand it. Even our ability to accept it is already a work of grace, a favour from God, the Catechism says. Without him we can do nothing.

The supreme example of God’s graciousness to us is the gift of his Son and his Holy Spirit, through whom he communicates to us his own divine life. Accordingly, we speak of God’s sanctifying or deifying grace.

Through the sacraments, the Holy Spirit bestows on us the gifts we need to associate ourselves with his work, enabling us to collaborate in the salvation of others and the growth of Christ’s body, the Church. Accordingly, we speak of sacramental graces.

We also speak of special graces, which St. Paul calls charisms, from the Greek word meaning favour, free gift, or benefit. They include the graces of state, which help us carry out our Christian responsibilities in our state of life.

However we use the word, God’s grace always means his favour or graciousness: free, gratuitous, utterly undeserved. If a favourite is someone to whom favours are granted, then we are all God’s favourites.

God loves us not because we are lovable, but because he is love. His favour is the cause, not the result, of whatever is lovable in us. There is nothing good in us we can claim as our own: even our power to accept or reject his graciousness is itself his free gift.

“Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain who build,” says the psalmist. “It is vain for you to rise early and put off your rest at night, to eat bread earned by hard toil: all this God gives to his beloved while they sleep.”

“All you who are thirsty, come to the water!” God says. “You who have no money, come, receive grain, and eat. Come; without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk.” Let us, then, live our lives in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ.