First Reading
Isaiah 55:6-9
1.“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near.” Can God always be near? Name some times in your day when it is easier to find God than at others. What helps you remember to “find God in all things” in your life?
2. Isaiah is writing about a call to conversion in this reading. “Let the scoundrel forsake his way.” For what ways do we need to ask for mercy, and need to “forsake”? What about environmental, or racial or immigrant injustices, and fixing the wrongs? Does God ever withhold mercy or pardon?
Second Reading
Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a
1. Is there someone or some group who “magnifies” the Lord for you? Every time you are around him/her/them, do you feel Christ is somehow present. Why is that? What is it about them that “clears your eyesight”?
2. What did Paul mean when he said, “For to me, life is Christ and death is gain.” What do you think was the “fruitful labor” for Paul? What is your “fruitful labor”?
Gospel
Matthew 20:1-16a
1. This Gospel reading is not about strict justice but outrageous generosity. Are any of us ever worthy of grace, first hour worker or eleventh, no matter what? What is the message of this parable? What is the message for you in your everyday life?
2. How would grace be handed out if humans made the rules? What if God’s ways were like our ways, if God’s bountiful generosity did not exceed the level of simple distributive justice?
According to Pope Francis in Joy of the Gospel, paragraph 48, who are the “last” in “the last shall be first”?
If the whole Church takes up [the] missionary impulse, she has to go forth to everyone without exception. But to whom should she go first? When we read the Gospel we find a clear indication: not so much our friends and wealthy neighbours, but above all the poor and the sick, those who are usually despised and overlooked, “those who cannot repay you” (Lk 14:14).
… Today and always, “the poor are the privileged recipients of the gospel,” and the fact that it is freely preached to them is a sign of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish. We have to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor. May we never abandon them.
Pope Francis, A Mother with an Open Heart,
Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, paragraph 48
