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
This Sunday’s readings are comforting. “Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” God welcomes us no matter how late we turn to him.
However, these readings also contain a warning. We must seek the Lord “while he may be found,” “while he is near.” That time will not last forever, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church: death marks the end of “the time of grace and mercy” God gives us to decide our “ultimate destiny.” The vineyard owner welcomed new workers all day, but when evening came, the time for working was over; he called them and gave them their pay.
There are “four last things to be ever remembered,” says The Penny Catechism: “death, judgement, hell, and heaven.”
The part of our life that ends with death determines everything that follows, notes Frank Sheed in his book A Map of Life. We will remain forever whatever we have become by the time we die.
After death comes what the Church calls the “particular” judgment: an infallible judgment by God of our whole life, from which there can be no appeal. Then we are granted either entrance into heaven (right away or after purification) or immediate and everlasting damnation.
“It is necessary to be very clear about hell,” Sheed says. If a man dies hating God, he is separated from God forever. We may argue that hatred of God is rare, but there is a form of self-love which is equivalent. We might go through life ignoring God and therefore not hating him but building up such a love of self that we have only to be confronted with God to hate him, for God demands our whole self.
Our natures need God just as our bodies need food and water. Deprived of food and water, we suffer; deprived of God, we suffer far more.
“Heaven consists in the knowledge of God and in the love of God flowing from, and proportioned to, that knowledge,” Sheed says. “As such, it means perfect happiness.”
If we examine the happiness of this life, he says, we find two principles. First: happiness is always in the soul; it may be caused by some bodily condition, but the body itself cannot be happy or unhappy. Second: the bodily condition that brings happiness is the proper functioning of the bodily organs.
Similarly, he says, the happiness that comes from the soul itself “always results from the proper functioning of a faculty,” such as intellect and will. “The intellect knows truth and is happy in the knowledge; the will loves goodness and is happy in the love.”
In heaven, our intellect, by which we know truth, will know God himself, who is supreme truth; our will, by which we love goodness, will be in immediate contact with God himself, who is supreme goodness. “The whole soul” will therefore be “functioning at its very highest, and happiness is the inevitable result.”
Besides our desires for truth and goodness, God will satisfy our desire for beauty, Sheed notes. Just consider the ecstasy of happiness to which our soul can be lifted when we look at a sunset or listen to a piece of music.
In describing the next world, Jesus often appealed explicitly to our earthly desires, promising us life, light, peace, a wedding feast, wine, the Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, and paradise. Thus he confirmed that earthly pleasures point towards heaven. We should always be grateful for them, then, but we must not mistake them for the real thing.
We must practise the virtue of hope, keeping alive in ourselves the explicit desire for our true country, heaven, and therefore living “in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ,” as St. Paul says in the Second Reading.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching “The Catholic Faith in Plain English” free of charge. All the materials (video and print) are available online at www.beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 3, “Who is Jesus Christ?” will be available September 20.
