Newsletter September 20th 2026 – 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time – With Gratitude

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8)

Have you ever looked at God’s mercy and thought, “That doesn’t seem fair”?

In this Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 20:1-16), Jesus tells the parable of the landowners and the labourers. Those who worked a gruelling twelve-hour day in the scorching heat received the exact same daily wage as the person who strolled in at five o’clock to work for just one hour. Humanly speaking, our sense of justice cries out. Where is the fairness in that?

Yet, as the prophet Isaiah reminds us in our first reading, God operates on an entirely different plane. His ways are infinitely higher than our ways.

The landowner in the parable isn’t running a business; he is running a rescue operation. He goes out again and again into the marketplace,    searching for those who are idle, overlooked, or deemed unemployable. His primary motivation isn’t strict compensation, but radical generosity.

This parable strikes at the heart of how we view grace. We live in a transactional world where we are conditioned to earn our keep. We want to rack up spiritual merits, punch our theological timecards, and ensure we get what we “deserve.”

But the Kingdom of God is entirely relational, not transactional. God doesn’t love us based on our productivity; He loves us simply because He is good. Whether we have spent a lifetime trying to follow Christ, or whether we are stumbling into the vineyard at the eleventh hour of our lives, His arms are open wide.

This week, let us release our rigid human scorecards. Instead of envying the grace shown to others – or doubting the grace offered to

Ourselves – let us rejoice in a God whose generosity has no limits, and whose mercy always outpaces our imagination.

Lord, teach us to trust Your ways. Give us generous hearts that celebrate Your mercy, especially when it looks different than we expect. Amen.