“The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard reveals the mercy and goodness of God,” said Bishop Ignatie of Husi during his sermon on Monday, adding that people must learn to look upon this goodness with generosity of heart.
Reflecting on the Gospel reading on the feast of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, the bishop said that those hired later in the vineyard were paid the same as the first labourer because “they had no work and no way of knowing, as the Gospel tells us, that there was somewhere they could go to labour. If they had not been called, they would not have known they could work in the master’s vineyard.”
He added that the master of the vineyard in the parable might explain to the first worker: “It does not matter at what hour of the day the others came, but that they came to work, just as you agreed from the first hour of the day to receive a denarius after completing your day’s labour.”
Inability to appreciate goodness
The worker hired first “was unable to rejoice in the good that the master shared with the utmost generosity towards everyone,” the bishop explained.
This spiritual weakness shows that “a sense of fairness not accompanied by love can at any moment turn into an inhuman legalism that crushes others,” he added.
“Likewise, if love is not accompanied by justice, truth and fairness, it can easily become mere sentimentalism or a cheap, empty euphoria.”
How to approach relations with others
Bishop Ignatie said the attitude of the labourer hired at the beginning of the day illustrates how people often approach relationships with others.
“Do you not think that this approach — of the one who demands an account from the master of the house — is multiplied among us and, I would say especially, in the Church, when we should have a generous eye wherever goodness exists? But if you are an evil person, you will never see goodness,” the bishop warned.
“We feed on evil and distribute it. Do not think there is no moral guilt for someone who simply clicks or ‘likes’ a post with defamatory content. Let no one deceive himself into thinking it is not a sin. On the contrary, it is a very grave sin, because you become a participant in the spread of evil.”
Bishop Ignatie celebrated the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Monday at the Cathedral in Huși. During the service, he ordained the monk Sofian Bălan, a member of the monastic community of Bujoreni Monastery, to the diaconate.
