Fr. Mike's Gospel Reflection for - Sunday, September 20, 2026

In this weekend’s parable, men who worked part of a day get the same wage as those who worked the whole day. Those who worked all day cried, “That’s not fair.” Many of us feel the same way when we believe that others are getting more than we think that they entitled to get. Even if we get exactly what we bargained for, we simply don’t like other people being treated better than we are treated. This is especially true if we believe that the other person is not as deserving as we are or did not earn the benefit in the way that we did.

This is often the way that we think about the Kingdom of God. We ask, “Why should a person who has been evil all of his life be able to repent on his deathbed and go to heaven?” That’s simply not fair. Like the laborers, we are more concerned with the perceived unfair advantage of others than we are grateful for our own opportunity to enter God’s kingdom.

Once again, Jesus tells us to worry about our own path to heaven rather than judging whether others are entitled to go to heaven. Who are we to question or even resent those who might be saved even though we determine them to be beyond saving? Fortunately, access to heaven is not about what we think! Throughout the Gospels, we read that God’s love extends to many unlikely candidates. His Kingdom likely includes many of those unlikely folks.

Of course, there are people in this world who use their free will to reject God and to abuse, ignore, hate, kill, and torture their fellow man. It is easy for us to decide that “those people” are simply not worthy of God’s Kingdom. After all, life makes sense if the “bad” people go to hell and the “good” people go to heaven. However, we are all sinners to some extent. Since we don’t know the standard by which God will judge us, we cannot be certain that we will be among those who are saved. God is free to open the narrow gate to anyone He chooses. We would do well to hope that it is wide enough to include us, even if that means that it also includes those we deem to be undeserving.

Fr. Mike