Friar Luciano Audisio, OAR, reflects on the parable of the workers in the vineyard, one of the most surprising passages in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. Through the landowner’s generosity, Jesus reveals that the Kingdom of God does not operate according to the logic of merit or comparison, but from the sheer gift of love. True conversion consists in learning to look with God’s eyes and to rejoice in the good He accomplishes in each person.
God’s grace shatters our calculations
The parable of the workers in the vineyard poses an uncomfortable question: what happens in our heart when God is good to others in a way we did not expect? The story begins with a landowner who goes out to look for workers. He goes out at dawn, at the third, sixth, and ninth hour, and finally at the eleventh. When the day is almost over, he still finds people waiting in the marketplace. He does not find them working; he finds them standing there, available, but not yet called.
Their answer is simple: “No one has hired us.” They are there, waiting for an opportunity that does not depend entirely on them. Perhaps others were chosen earlier because they were stronger, younger, better known, or because they arrived at the right moment. They remain on the sidelines, watching the day go by. And the landowner, instead of ignoring them, goes out again. This is an image of God: a God who goes out to seek, who does not tire of looking at the marketplace, and who keeps seeing those whom others have not seen.
That is why the way the day ends is so surprising. The last receive a full denarius, the same as the first. Then the murmuring begins. Those who have borne “the burden of the day and the heat” feel they have been treated unjustly. But the landowner reminds them of something decisive: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius?”He has taken nothing from them. They have received what was agreed. The problem is not what they received, but that they cannot bear the generosity granted to the other. Grace does not abolish justice; rather, it reveals that God’s love overflows our human calculations.
Here a word appears that Jesus places at the center of the parable: “Or are you envious because I am good?” Literally, he asks if his eye is evil because he is good (ἢ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου πονηρός ἐστιν ὅτι ἐγὼ ἀγαθός εἰμι;). The evil eye is a gaze that stops contemplating the gift received to compare it with the neighbor’s gift. And when comparison enters the heart, even that which previously made us happy begins to seem insufficient to us. The first laborer has a denarius in his hand, but his eyes are fixed on the other’s denarius. He has received what was promised, but he can no longer rejoice in it.
This touches us, because we too can live the faith this way. We can measure our life against the lives of others: who received more, who was recognized, who had a more important mission, who seems more successful, who arrived later and yet received a grace we believe we deserved first. Even in the Church we can fall into this temptation: turning service into an account, self-giving into merit, and vocation into a competition. We stop giving thanks for what God has done with us and begin to ask why He has done it with others.
Learning to look with God’s eyes
Jesus invites us to a conversion of our gaze. Already in the Sermon on the Mount he had said: “The lamp of the body is the eye.” If the eye is sound, the whole body is full of light; if it is bad, everything is in darkness. The parable of the vineyard turns that teaching into a story. The problem of the first workers is not their work, but their gaze. They have not lost the denarius; they have lost the ability to contemplate it as a gift.
Perhaps our conversion is to learn to look as the landowner looks. He does not look at hours worked, performance, or accumulated merits. He looks at persons. He looks at the one who arrived early and the one who arrived late. He looks at the one who had many opportunities and the one who spent the day waiting for someone to call him. His goodness is not born of more generous accounting, but of a gaze capable of recognizing the need and dignity of each person.
That is why the final phrase takes on a new meaning: “The last will be first, and the first, last.” It is not simply a matter of swapping places in a line. The Kingdom of God comes to dissolve the line itself. Where we ask who deserves more, God asks who needs to be found. Where we count hours, God contemplates stories. Where we compare merits, God offers grace.
The true richness of the Kingdom is to rejoice in a brother’s good
Let us ask, then, for a sound eye, a simple gaze, able to give thanks for one’s own denarius without growing sad over a brother’s. For perhaps true poverty is not receiving less, but ceasing to recognize the gift we already have. And perhaps the true richness of the Kingdom consists in seeing the other’s joy not as a threat, but as one more reason to give thanks.
When we learn that gaze, we will understand that in God’s vineyard no one loses because another has been loved. On the contrary: the gift received becomes greater when we allow the other also to rejoice at having been found, called, and loved.
The eye that learns to see: the joy of discovering God’s grace in others
Friar Luciano Audisio, OAR, reflects on the parable of the workers in the vineyard, one of the most surprising passages in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. Through the landowner’s generosity, Jesus reveals that the Kingdom of God does not operate according to the logic of merit or comparison, but from the sheer gift of love. True conversion consists in learning to look with God’s eyes and to rejoice in the good He accomplishes in each person.
God’s grace shatters our calculations
The parable of the workers in the vineyard poses an uncomfortable question: what happens in our heart when God is good to others in a way we did not expect? The story begins with a landowner who goes out to look for workers. He goes out at dawn, at the third, sixth, and ninth hour, and finally at the eleventh. When the day is almost over, he still finds people waiting in the marketplace. He does not find them working; he finds them standing there, available, but not yet called.
Their answer is simple: “No one has hired us.” They are there, waiting for an opportunity that does not depend entirely on them. Perhaps others were chosen earlier because they were stronger, younger, better known, or because they arrived at the right moment. They remain on the sidelines, watching the day go by. And the landowner, instead of ignoring them, goes out again. This is an image of God: a God who goes out to seek, who does not tire of looking at the marketplace, and who keeps seeing those whom others have not seen.
That is why the way the day ends is so surprising. The last receive a full denarius, the same as the first. Then the murmuring begins. Those who have borne “the burden of the day and the heat” feel they have been treated unjustly. But the landowner reminds them of something decisive: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius?”He has taken nothing from them. They have received what was agreed. The problem is not what they received, but that they cannot bear the generosity granted to the other. Grace does not abolish justice; rather, it reveals that God’s love overflows our human calculations.
Here a word appears that Jesus places at the center of the parable: “Or are you envious because I am good?” Literally, he asks if his eye is evil because he is good (ἢ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου πονηρός ἐστιν ὅτι ἐγὼ ἀγαθός εἰμι;). The evil eye is a gaze that stops contemplating the gift received to compare it with the neighbor’s gift. And when comparison enters the heart, even that which previously made us happy begins to seem insufficient to us. The first laborer has a denarius in his hand, but his eyes are fixed on the other’s denarius. He has received what was promised, but he can no longer rejoice in it.
This touches us, because we too can live the faith this way. We can measure our life against the lives of others: who received more, who was recognized, who had a more important mission, who seems more successful, who arrived later and yet received a grace we believe we deserved first. Even in the Church we can fall into this temptation: turning service into an account, self-giving into merit, and vocation into a competition. We stop giving thanks for what God has done with us and begin to ask why He has done it with others.
Learning to look with God’s eyes
Jesus invites us to a conversion of our gaze. Already in the Sermon on the Mount he had said: “The lamp of the body is the eye.” If the eye is sound, the whole body is full of light; if it is bad, everything is in darkness. The parable of the vineyard turns that teaching into a story. The problem of the first workers is not their work, but their gaze. They have not lost the denarius; they have lost the ability to contemplate it as a gift.
Perhaps our conversion is to learn to look as the landowner looks. He does not look at hours worked, performance, or accumulated merits. He looks at persons. He looks at the one who arrived early and the one who arrived late. He looks at the one who had many opportunities and the one who spent the day waiting for someone to call him. His goodness is not born of more generous accounting, but of a gaze capable of recognizing the need and dignity of each person.
That is why the final phrase takes on a new meaning: “The last will be first, and the first, last.” It is not simply a matter of swapping places in a line. The Kingdom of God comes to dissolve the line itself. Where we ask who deserves more, God asks who needs to be found. Where we count hours, God contemplates stories. Where we compare merits, God offers grace.
The true richness of the Kingdom is to rejoice in a brother’s good
Let us ask, then, for a sound eye, a simple gaze, able to give thanks for one’s own denarius without growing sad over a brother’s. For perhaps true poverty is not receiving less, but ceasing to recognize the gift we already have. And perhaps the true richness of the Kingdom consists in seeing the other’s joy not as a threat, but as one more reason to give thanks.
When we learn that gaze, we will understand that in God’s vineyard no one loses because another has been loved. On the contrary: the gift received becomes greater when we allow the other also to rejoice at having been found, called, and loved.
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