Just Love!

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Jud 9:6-15; Mt 20:1-16

Today’s Gospel highlights God’s ‘just love’ in the person of the landowner through The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. 

When we say that the landowner was characterized by ‘just love,’ we mean that he practiced divine justice. However, that is not all! In his attitude and practice, we see that his love transcends justice. 

We may find ‘just love’ at work in the landowner in three ways. 

1. The landowner practices a radical recognition that turns his gaze toward the neglected humanity. In two places, we find the landowner having a conversation with those he hires. When he finds a group of workers standing idle in the marketplace, he tells them (without them requesting him to hire them), ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ When he finally hires workers at five o’clock, he specifically asks them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ and finds out from them, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ 

The landowner’s recognition shows that he repeatedly goes out to hire those who were ignored by other landowners. When no one was bothered about their fate, the good man exhibited great consideration. Secondly, his recognition exposes the popular fallacy and unjust accusation that the poor are lazy and establishes that they are a humanity that is denied opportunities to prove themselves. Thus, he not only finds out the truth but also rectifies the mistake by hiring them willingly. Thirdly, his compassion thinks of the poor families of those daily workers that await the day’s wage for their sustenance. Hence, he pays them equally, just as he pays those who were hired early. Thus, we understand that the landowner’s recognition is an integral part of his justice. 

2. The landowner pays the workers the wage that was agreed upon. In other words, he gives them their due, though those who arrived early expect a hike. Unfortunately, those who grumble against the landowner give a sense that he is unjust, though he agreed to hire them for the ‘daily usual wage’ and duly honored his agreement. Their attitude betrays not only their overexpectation but also their envy and ingratitude that distort the goodness and generosity of the landowner. 

3. The landowner is moved by compassion and love. It is such goodness that prods him to go in search of workers not only at dawn but at other times like nine o’clock, around noon, three o’clock, and five o’clock. His repeated trips to the marketplace not only symbolize his love but also the compelling question that he must have faced, ‘What would happen to them if I do not hire them today?’ 

Indeed, the landowner was just in his dealings with those he hired. However, his love transcended his sense of justice.

Thus, the landowner’s ‘just love’ is proper for God as well. 

Let us pray that we may be practitioners of love that transcends justice. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar