The Gospel wants to tell us: It is never too late

In our spiritual life each of us should experience being treated not like everyone else but as a unique individual.

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Today’s readings can be found here.

The seemingly blatant injustice recounted in today’s Gospel is one of those stories that moves me every time the Gospel retells it—perhaps because I, too, have the feeling that I am part of the group of those laborers who disconsolately reply to the master, “No one has hired us.”

And it’s not a matter of time because I had the good fortune to really know Jesus while I was still a child, to enter the seminary as a teenager, and to become a priest at the young age of 24. However, I have experienced that only Jesus, through a web of stories and relationships, took me seriously and trusted me fully.

I think it is important to understand that the greatest good fortune a person can have in their life is to cross paths with people who make an investment of trust in them.

In our spiritual life each of us should experience being treated not like everyone else but as a unique individual. Only if you understand that you are unique will you realize how valuable you are in God’s eyes.

If you feel you are just one more in the crowd, you are only reasoning from the perspective of pay, and then you do not understand God. Each of us in God’s eyes is an exceptional individual for whom He can say, “You are worth everything, even if you only realized it at the end of the day.”

It seems that the Gospel wants to tell us: It is never too late.

Father Luigi Maria Epicoco is a priest of the Aquila Diocese and teaches Philosophy at the Pontifical Lateran University and at the ISSR ‘Fides et ratio,’ Aquila. He dedicates himself to preaching, especially for the formation of laity and religious, giving conferences, retreats and days of recollection. He has authored numerous books and articles. Since 2021, he has served as the Ecclesiastical Assistant in the Vatican Dicastery for Communication and columnist for the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.