Mercy and Justice!

Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Ez 34:1-11; Mt 20:1-16

Today’s Gospel highlights mercy as an integral part of Divine justice.

We can understand the landowner’s virtue of justice in two ways. 

At first, his justice is seen in his agreement to pay the usual daily wage for those whom he hires at dawn. 

According to Thomas Aquinas, justice is ‘giving one his or her due.’

Going by the definition, the landowner is true to his word by paying the agreed sum to the laborers. 

However, that is not all. There is more to his virtue of justice. 

The landowner is considerate toward those who go unhired for the whole day. But he is vilified for his thoughtful consideration of the unhired workers. 

The complaining laborers look reasonable with their grumbling attitude. But deep down, they resent the fact that those laborers who arrived late were made equal to them. 

Instead of building expectations about a raise that was not agreed upon, they could have negotiated a raise. But all they could do was grumble against the goodness of the landowner and vilify his merciful gesture as mere partiality. 

It looks as if the landowner is harsh with his response toward those laborers who grumble against him. But we must note that it was the complaining laborers who were harsher in challenging not only the landowner’s virtue of justice but also disregarding the fate of those laborers who would also need the day’s wage to feed their families. 

Through his response, the landowner inspires us to think that justice is incomplete without mercy. 

The landowner’s response is a blow to those dominant minds who resent the equal treatment of others. 

Here, I am compelled to think of Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot’s words on justice: ‘The scales of justice cannot always be evenly weighed, and I must learn for once to live with the imbalance.’

God is just because He is also merciful. 

Let us pray for the grace to integrate mercy into our justice. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar