FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK
My Dear Parishioners
After so many times teaching the 8th graders at our school, the students get used to my phrases and tendencies. Sometimes it feels like they can read my mind and anticipate my next move. One of the most common instances of this is a turn of phrase I learned during my years in seminary. A professor once asked me, “What is the reward for good work in the Church?” When I hesitated, he quickly answered his own questions: “More work!” His point wasn’t that of a demanding God or an unfair system… he was simply naming a reality within the life of a Christian. I’ve taken the notion to heart and now, any time I ask the simple question, “What is the reward for Good work?” the students will quickly respond “More work!”
At first glance, the phrase can seem oppressive and intimidating. I work hard and my only reward is that I must keep working hard? What kind of exhausting system is this? At times, this notion can imply a sort of works-based salvation, where we need to just keep earning our way to eternal life. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Lord is not a taskmaster, demanding that I achieve certain things before salvation is open to me, prodding me to work after work.
However, the reality is that the gift the Lord has planted in my heart is greater than I could ever fathom. He has saved me from the oppression of the evil one, opened the gates of eternity, and instilled sanctifying grace in my heart through my Baptism. Nothing I could ever do could make up for that! The gift of Faith that I have access to is strong enough to uproot trees and plant them in the sea as we hear in the Gospel! A blessing this great can never just end with me keeping it to myself! The Lord granted it to me, and it must be shared!
This is the worldview of the Lord in this strange parable in our Gospel. Jesus tells the story of a man who seems to do everything he is supposed to do: He plows and tends the sheep; just has he is obliged to do. The problem comes when he thinks he deserves some grand reward for his work. No, the Lord says, he has only done what is “obliged to do.” If Jesus has truly died on a Cross for me and rose from the dead, how absurd it would be for me to act as if he “owed” me something further! No, I am the one who owes something, and how absurd my life will be until I act gratefully in return. How often we act as if I “deserve” things from the Lord… why haven’t you done this, why aren’t you listening to me, like a spoiled child, forgetting He has done everything for me already!
I often forget that the Lord has given me a spirit, not of cowardice, but of “power and love and self-control” as we hear in the Second Reading. I have the capacity to do great things for the Lord because He has first done greater things for me! The reward for good is work is more work not because the Lord is a task master, but because His gift is so great that the more, I respond to it, the more He invites me into it! Of course, He is going to ask me to do harder things to spread His Good News after I have responded to His Goodness, because I WANT to do those hard things in response to everything, He has done for me. The truth is I am one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread, and I desperately want those other beggars to find food, not so that I get the attention, but because my life wouldn’t make sense if I didn’t!
The reward for good work is, indeed, more work, not because our God is a taskmaster but because He has been good to me and I have an inherent desire to respond to that goodness. Any time I am tempted to think that I deserve or have earned certain things, may I remember the magnitude of His goodness and may I be inspired to respond to it!
Peace,
Fr. Monteleone
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