Septuagesima Sunday

[Stone]

The Calls of God to His Creatures
by Bishop Ehrler, 1891

"The kingdom of heaven is like to a master of a family who went out early
in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard!" (Matt. 20: 1.)

The Gospel of Septuagesima Sunday is one of the most profound and comprehensive of the ecclesiastical year. The whole history of man, the history of the kingdom of God upon earth, from the first day in which the Lord created the universe and went forth to hire laborers into his vineyard, down to the last, to the evening of the world, when he will come to judge the living and the dead, and to reward each one according to his works,--all this, my brethren, is delineated in the brief but striking epitome which constitutes the parable of this Sunday, and these words, moreover, are well calculated to stir up in us an earnest spirit of penance. Therefore, we will consider today:


I. The various calls of the Lord to mankind in the course of time; and
II. What thoughts these calls of God must awaken in our souls.


I. "The master of a family went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard."

1. Early in the morning the Almighty went forth to create the world, the heavens and the earth. He made Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, and placed them in Paradise, in a garden of delights, in order to cultivate and take care of it. Mankind was to remain obedient and faithful to the divine will and commands, until the great day of life was passed, when God agreed to give them the promised reward of everlasting happiness --God repeats this, His first going forth, at the birth of every human being. In the early morning of our life, He graciously draws near to us. He raises us through the holy Sacrament of Baptism to a higher, supernatural life, and fills us with His Holy Spirit. He calls us through the first impressions of a pious Christian education, through the salutary instructions of our parents, teachers, pastors, and confessors, urging us to remain faithful to Him from the very beginning of our lives, and to cultivate the garden of our hearts (that other vineyard of God), preserving it from the blighting influence of evil.

2. The Master of the family went forth for a second time into the world. Those who were first called by God, in the wickedness of their hearts, refused Him their service and obedience. They fell away from their God, and His Holy Spirit departed from them. "My spirit," says the Bible, " shall not remain in man forever, because he is flesh."(Gen. 6: 3.) Men became carnal, and the Spirit of God could no longer dwell with them. "God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times," (Gen. 6 :45) after the first thousand years, went forth for the second time; at the third hour, as it were, He went forth in order to hire laborers into his vineyard. He destroyed by the Deluge those first inhabitants of the earth, those giants of old, and chose Noah as the progenitor of a new and better race. He made with him a special covenant more gracious than that which He had concluded with his predecessors. As a perpetual sign of this covenant, he placed His bow in the heavens to shine before all future generations as a memorial of His second going forth in order to hire laborers into His vineyard.

In the third hour of our lives did not the Lord also go forth the second time to engage us as laborers in his vineyard? In our rash and impetuous youth, when the gracious impressions of earlier days are lost or forgotten; when our natural concupiscence is generally quickened, and all our thoughts are bent upon evil--the Lord goes forth a second time to warn us, and call us again to his service. In youth, when man, in the arrogance of his heart, woos the children of the world, like those giants of old, and imitates them in sin and wickedness--the Lord going forth for the second time, approaches them with the greatest graces, in order to save them from ruin. He approaches us with the grace of holy Confirmation; and, in the anointing of holy Chrism, He places upon our brows the sign of that great covenant which binds us to him as faithful laborers, during the remainder of our life. He comes to us in those perilous years with the grace of absolution; and He enters into the depths of our souls in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar, to seal and confirm the blessed covenant of His mercy.

3. At the sixth and at the ninth hours, the Lord went forth for the third and fourth times, saying to those whom he found idle: "Go you also into my vineyard." Another thousand years, the third epoch in the history of the world, had passed like a courier in flying haste. A thousand years are as a single day before God, and as the stream of time rolls rapidly into the bosom of eternity, men again forgot their God, as they had done from the beginning. All their time and affections were given up to temporal affairs. Sunk in luxury and wantonness, in the pride of their sinful hearts, they began to turn away wholly from their Creator. But, before they were driven by want to seek new dwelling places in strange lands, they wished to erect a proud monument of their earthly sinful endeavors. They built a mighty tower in order to have a visible centre upon the earth, a rallying point, so to speak, for their race, and for their worldly ambition. But God desired to be the spiritual centre of his creatures; and that their eyes should not be directed to the work of their own hands but be raised up above these mundane things even to the highest heavens. And God descended from those celestial heights, and confounded their speech. (Gen. 11: 6-8.)

The eyes of men, however, remained fixed upon the earth. Separated from God, they could not help being immersed in sins and vices. At last, they sank so deep in iniquity and forgetfulness of God, that they paid divine honors to the stars and to images made by their own hands; they cast themselves down in worship before men and beasts, and even adored the corrupt deities of their own foul sins and vices. Thus the thirtieth century in the world's history, with its overwhelming weight of woe and evil, sank into the stream of time: and the thirty-first began its dark existence. Far from God, given over to earthly desires, and hardened in the most abominable vices and crimes, mankind wandered forlorn in the broad road that leadeth to destruction.

4. Then it was that the master of the family went forth again at the sixth hour; then it was that God made a new covenant with Abraham the Just, so that, through him, the precious and fast-expiring sparks of the worship of the true God and of the hope of a Redeemer might be kept alive. He took him from his nation and from his father's house, to found in him the progenitor of a new race, the chosen people of God. In him, were all the generations of mankind to be blessed; and at the appointed time, the grace of redemption was destined to descend upon all nations through his offspring, as through a holy channel. That his people might not forget this third going forth of their God, and might always remember the covenant of mercy made with Abraham, the Lord, in the rite of Circumcision, cut the sign of that covenant in their very flesh.

5. At the ninth hour, he went forth again and called Moses, His servant. He sent the Prophets to remind His people continually of His merciful promises, and of their high vocation; and when, in spite of all, they forsook Him and despised His benefits, He strove to recall them to their duty, at one time by the most extraordinary manifestations of love and kindness, and again by severity and rigorous chastisements.

If we consider the going forth of the Lord at the sixth and ninth hours, those merciful efforts of the great Master of the human family which extended through two thousand years of the world's existence, do we not find, my brethren, these same goings forth represented also, in our lives? What are the sixth and ninth hours in which the Lord repeatedly goes forth to call us, as laborers, into His vineyard? Contemplate the vision of your lives, that important period extending from youth to middle age and on into old age; consider those years in which man, being burdened with earthly cares, sinks into complete forgetfulness of God and of his soul's salvation; those many long years of middle life--do they not resemble those ancient years beginning with the call of Abraham and including the history of the people of Israel down to the end of the fortieth century of the world? Does not the Lord in these long years, as in the sixth and in the ninth hours, appear repeatedly to warn and to remind us of the great mission which He so earnestly desires us to accomplish? Does He not earnestly call upon His creatures to come and devote to His service, those precious years of life which remain for them? Does He not, again and again, offer them His choicest graces, calling them forth, as He did Abraham and the whole Jewish people, from their nation, their homes, and their abiding place in an unbelieving and sinful life, making them by His covenant of mercy the progenitors of a new race, the chosen children of God? Does He not often and plainly speak to them as He once spoke to the Jews, by alternate acts of kindness and severity, threats and caresses, and by the solemn warnings of the Prophets re-echoed by the voice of His Church? O that we had heeded His gracious calls during those past years! O that we were now laboring faithfully in His vineyard, looking joyfully forward to the close of the long day of life, for our great recompense--the infinite treasures of the kingdom of God!

6. "About the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing: and He saith to them: Why stand you here all the day idle? They say to him: Because no man hath hired us. He saith to them: Go you also into my vineyard." What is this last going forth of the Master of the family at the eleventh hour, but the coming of the Incarnate God upon the earth, in order to call mankind for the last time, and engage laborers for His vineyard?" God having spoken on divers occasions, and many ways, in times past, to the fathers by the prophets: last of all, in these days, hath spoken to us by His Son." (Hebr. 1: 1, 2.)

7. The Prophets had spoken in vain. Mankind continued to sink deeper and deeper into the slough of vice and iniquity. Millions stood idle, for there was none to guide or assist them in working out their salvation. The Gentiles could truly say: "No man hath hired us." They were lying idle on the highways of life, far from God and estranged from Him and His kingdom, buried deeply in the mire of error and superstition. With untiring mercy towards His obstinate and wayward creatures, the Lord arose for the last time to fulfill His promises, and called the Gentile world into his vineyard. All mankind were thus privileged to spend, at least, the last hours of the day in His service and to receive in the great evening of the world's history the promised penny of everlasting life.

Thus, also, God goes forth in the evening of every life, for the last time, to call to Himself that poor soul that is satiated and wearied with its miserable existence. He speaks to it in plain words; He makes clear to it the transitory and empty nature of all earthly things; and He draws near to it with the consolations of His greatest graces, so that, absolved and strengthened by the holy Sacraments of Viaticum and Extreme Unction, the departing spirit may follow Him, at last, into His celestial vineyard. Alas, in that solemn hour will be fulfilled with many men the words of the Lord, when He lamented over the prevarication of all mankind, and cried out by the voice of His prophet: "All the day long have I spread forth my hands to a people that believeth not, and contradicteth me!" (Rom. 10: 21.)


II. Casting a glance over those great epochs of the world in which, from time to time, God went forth to call men into his vineyard, and contrasting with them the different periods of human life at which God in His mercy calls us to His service, I imagine I hear a supernatural voice resounding loud and strong from the abyss of by-gone centuries and enunciating these three grand watch-words:


1. God is merciful at all times.

2. Work diligently in the vineyard of the Lord,
whenever He calls you to His service; and

3. Take courage and enter, even though, perhaps, you have
been late in following the call of the divine Master.


1. The infinite and incomprehensible mercy of God is illustrated in an admirable manner in the beautiful parable of today's Gospel. The master of a family goes out early in the morning, to hire laborers into his vineyard; he goes out at the third hour, and again, at the sixth and ninth hours. Nay, he goes out once more at the eleventh hour, and calls all who are standing idle into his vineyard, in order to give to them the penny of everlasting life. Does not every later going-forth call out more loudly than the preceding one: "Thy mercy is magnified even to the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds." (Ps. 56: 11.) Or, when God with even richer and more abundant clemency, calls His creatures, in the fullness of time, revealing to them His inmost being, and sending down His only begotten Son upon the earth; when the Son of God wanders wearily through the rough valleys of this lower sphere sinking, at last, under the cruel weight of that Cross, on which He was to consummate the redemption of the world, do not His infinite love and self-sacrifice proclaim yet more loudly and emphatically: "Thy mercy is magnified even to the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds?" It would have been love and mercy if the Lord had only established His great Vineyard, and called mankind therein, in the beginning of time; promising them the penny of his heavenly reward. If He had gone forth but once for that divine purpose, we would have had abundant reason to praise Him and His mercy everlastingly with the stars of heaven and to rejoice forever with the sons of God. But the Lord went forth repeatedly, and, with never-failing endurance, called to His service the successors of the unhappy people who had despised his earlier calls.

2. Should not we who have been called at the eleventh hour to receive the overflowing stream of the grace of God through Jesus Christ, praise His great mercy towards us? Look back upon the millions and millions of human lives falling like drops of water into the bosom of the earth, and returning no more;--look back upon the countless children of men who have wandered over the face of the globe since the days of Adam, of Noah, of Abraham, and of the Prophets, and question these hosts, passing before our eyes like the shifting sands of the desert, if they can boast of as great grace and mercy as we have received. They all desired and hoped to see the day of Christ; that the gracious sun of Redemption might shine upon them and bring them to everlasting life and happiness. Behold among them the noblest spirits, the brightest and best of the heathen world, the most faithful and devout of the Jewish people. They stand before us in grief,--yea, in a sort of holy despair,--with eyes inclined to the earth, weighed down by the burden of sin which thousands of years have heaped upon their shoulders; and if they raise their eyes to heaven, they see only the barred gates and the closed entrance to Paradise, or the dark and joyless Limbo which awaited the just before the atonement of Christ. Without any merit on our part, the Lord has called us in the clear, bright day of Redemption into His heavenly kingdom. We may drink to the full from that stream of blessings which was a sealed fountain for thousands of years. Must we not in the great gratitude of our hearts cry out with the royal Psalmist: "The mercies of the Lord will I sing forever?" (Ps. 88: 2.)

3. Look into your own life, and ponder upon the calls to His vineyard with which the Lord has so often favored you. Number all the admonitions of the grace of God which He has, in a manner, squandered on you--how He called you in the innocence of childhood,--how He drew near you for the second and third time in your youth; how He repeatedly approached you in the sixth and ninth hours, and now, perhaps, even at the eleventh hour how He once more calls your soul to His service--are you not bound with special gratitude to proclaim and praise the mercy of the Lord? It would be a beautiful and profitable sight if we could look down into the soul of every human being and there contemplate how the Lord draws most lovingly and mercifully near to every soul in the various seasons and hours of life. Above, in the life of eternity, where we shall no more see as through a glass darkly, but face to face, the visitations of God for the salvation of our souls will stand forth before our eyes clearly and visibly, and will fill us with everlasting gratitude. For your own part, the various calls of the divine Master, all cry out to you if you will but hearken to their eloquent accents: "Work in the vineyard of the Lord at whatever hour He has called upon you, and the reward which he, in the evening, will distribute among His chosen ones will, likewise, be yours!"

(a) Our call to the celestial Vineyard, and the penny of reward which is promised us, are certainly a pure gift from the mercy of God. "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy," (Rom. 9: 16,) to make men, one day, partakers of the heavenly glory. But it requires faithful and untiring labor on our side if the decrees of God's mercy shall be fulfilled in our regard. "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His Angels: and then will He render to every man according to his works." (Matt. 16: 27.) "Many are called, but few are chosen," says the Lord to us in the Gospel of this day. "Therefore, . . . be ye steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the works of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." (1 Cor. 15: 58.) Without the grace of God we cannot be saved; neither shall we reach eternal bliss unless we co-operate with that grace.

(b) It is then with good reason that our Lord compares the service which He demands from each one of us with the labor which a master requires in His vineyard. The vine exacts from its owner the utmost care and persistent labor. But if the extraordinary care of the vinedresser be not assisted by the warm rays of the sun and a season of propitious weather, all his labor and trouble are fruitless. The Lord expects from us Christians a most careful and laborious assiduity in His service. Our Blessed Lord calls the kingdom of heaven a costly pearl, so as to represent to us the trouble we must take to procure it! Pearls are not found upon the roads, or lying about in profusion, so that they can be picked up without any effort or trouble. The pearlfisher embarks in a small boat upon dangerous waters; and the diver descends to the bottom of the sea in order to bring forth the precious gem. Our Saviour calls the kingdom of heaven a precious treasure, in order to show us that as we must dig into the bowels of the earth with much labor and sweat to lay hold of its gold and silver, so we must suffer and toil in His service if we would bring up from the depths of our souls, the priceless treasures of eternal life.

© All whom the master of the family called at different times (according to the words of the Gospel) accepted, without delay, his gracious invitation. No one turned back from the gates of the vineyard; and no one stopped working after having once entered therein. All labored uninterruptedly until evening, when the Lord of the vineyard said to his steward: "Call the laborers and pay them their hire, beginning from the last even to the first." They all received the same wages--the penny which he had promised them; those who had labored only one hour, and those who had borne the burden and the heat of the day. This fact recorded (in the Gospel) of the lord of the vineyard was not intended to imply that it was a matter of indifference to him how many hours in the day a laborer had worked for him, or how faithful or how careless he had shown himself in his work; but He (the Saviour) meant, on that occasion, to teach the Pharisees this great truth: That all men have a common claim upon the reward of eternal happiness. Those haughty Pharisees believed that, as the descendants of the chosen people of God, they had a much greater right to the everlasting joys-of heaven, than the other nations, which He afterwards called into His kingdom.

(d) In whatever hour the Lord sends forth the calls of His grace to us, whether it be in the middle, or in the beginning, of our lives, let us correspond to it immediately and work unceasingly, like all those whom the master of the Gospel called into His vineyard; so that we may receive not merely the penny of salvation, but the richest joys and the highest degree of glory, as the reward of our labors. Let us toil unintermittingly at our task until the night of Death descends upon us: so that the Lord may not say to us, as He did to the Jews of old: "The publicans and the harlots shall go into the kingdom of God before you." (Matt. 21 : 31.)

(e) Take courage, aged man, venerable woman, take courage though, perhaps, you have been late in following the call of God. There is comfort for all in the words of our Gospel: "The last shall be first, and the first last." Or, says the Lord: "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will? Is thine eye evil because I am good?" (Matt. 20 : 15.) "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy." (Rom. 9 : 15.) "And therefore, have I raised thee, that I may show my power in thee, and my name may be spoken of throughout all the earth." (Exod. 9 : 16.) Our salvation will always be the work of grace and of our own co-operation. Every moment of our lives which is sanctified by the grace of God, bears in itself the prize of everlasting happiness in heaven. Every human work performed through divine grace, has a claim to the promised reward. It is, therefore, never too late to enter upon the service of God, or to work in His holy vineyard. When the grace of God and His mercy begin to shine upon the sinner, then will the darkness of the blackest night be changed into the brightest day. While no one has a right to everlasting bliss, yet can we, at all times, build our hopes of salvation upon the all-powerful grace of God. That, alone, can give us--when and where it pleases--the reward of eternal life.

Do we not see in the history of those Saints whom the Lord called late in life, how through their great love, and through their fiery zeal, the last have become first? St. Paul was called by Christ after he had persecuted the Church and was "yet breathing out the threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," yet of his faithful co-operation with grace, he cries out: "By the grace of God, I am what I am: and His grace in me hath not been void, but I have labored more than all,"--meaning the other Apostles. (1 Cor. 15 : 10.) St. Mary Magdalen (and with her, thousands of penitent souls), received at a still later hour, the divine call of repentance,--nevertheless, the Lord hath said of her: "Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much." (Luke 7 :47.) Has not the Christian era, the eleventh and last hour of the world's history, done more for the spread of the kingdom of truth and virtue than all the earlier periods? Is not the whole history of Christianity,--are not all of us who were called from among the Gentiles, shining proofs of the words of our Lord: "The last shall be first, and the first last?"

"Go thou, also, into my vineyard"--thus the Lord says to every human soul, as, in His various goings forth from the throne of His glory, He walks throughout the world. But who could believe, or comprehend, that God will vouchsafe to call for the second and third time the man who has despised and rejected his first invitation? Who could believe it, and sin against the divine mercy? Ah! no, my dearly beloved, entering with holy earnestness and in a penitential spirit upon this sacred season of Lent,--let us attend to the voice of God, let us promptly respond to the merciful and maternal invitation of His holy Church, to the end that we may not merely be reckoned among the many called, but also,--praise to the infinite mercy of God!--among the blessed few chosen! Amen.