The rich young man (English) and the workers in the vineyard (Russian)

6 September 1981

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Today, by my mistake, we read two different Gospels – one in Russian and the other in English. But the two passages are so in harmony with each other that I should like to combine them and answer the question raised in the first one by the passage in the second.

The question in the first one and addressed not just to the people who were listening to Christ at that time, but to each one of us, is «whoever can be saved if the ideal of the Christian life is so high?» If in Christ and in the Gospels man is so great, who can possibly hope to grow, as St. Paul puts it, to the full measure of the stature of Christ, who can grow to the level of Christ the Saviour? No one, of course. But does that mean that the way to salvation is barred to us? Who can be saved?

If we turn to the Old Testament, the reply is: the pure in heart, the undeceitful, honest man who does no ill to his neighbour, a man true to God and true to men. But again the question arises, who can be saved? Who can say about himself that his heart is pure, that his mind is cleansed, that he has a firm and unwavering will towards the good? Who can say that he is true to God and true to man? So who can be saved? A whole lifetime is not enough to grow to such a stature.

There are several passages in the Gospels, both in the one that I read in error today and others that are read on Sundays or feast days, which give us great hope because at bottom they all say to each one of us: you are saved because you are loved by God, because you are dear to Him, because the price He is prepared to pay as a ransom for you is the whole life and suffering and death, and the whole glory of Jesus Christ the Only-begotten Son of God who came into the world to save sinners.

The passage that was read in Slavonic today tells us about people who from the first moment went out to work in God's vineyard, and worked till the evening, the evening of their life, the evening of human history, the time when the end comes. There were others who stood idle for some hours, three, six, nine. These too were found by God and called, and they responded and joined in the labour of the others. God accepted them also, not for the amount of their work, but because they responded to His summons within their hearts and in their lives; not because they worked as much or as well as the others, but because they responded to His appeal to be noble, decent, to grow to the measure of true man, to become God's witnesses on earth, through living; they reacted by sharing in God's work and the work of other people.

There is another passage, the parable about the people who were called and refused to come, and about the beggars, the outcasts, the lane, whom the Lord ordered His servants to gather for the feast. They probably came with terror in their hearts, because the description of their rags, their dereliction, their ugliness and disease does not refer to their physical state, but to the state of their minds and souls, and when they were summoned to appear before God, in His shining presence, they thought with horror of judgement; they had not yet heard Christ's saying that He had come to save the world, not to judge it.

Those were saved by the grace of God, but also by something else, by the ultimate horror which took hold of them when they realised that now not only would the darkness of their lives be revealed, but the fact that they had lived in vain, that they had missed the whole point of life – which is love. In penitence they entered the Kingdom of God.

And here is the answer, the hopeful, joyous, glorious answer that the Gospel gives us: «Repent., Realise that the way of evil is not your way, evil is ugliness, open wounds, squalor and rags, so turn away from it. Even if you remain enslaved to it, come to hate it and to love beauty, justice, truth and goodness, your neighbour and God, and see yourself in the glory and beauty in which God can see you now, before time, knowing what you will be like when you come to Him and He will make you clean and new. But we must not delay, not because the Last Judgement is coming, but because if we understand all this, how can we refrain from rushing heart and soul, with all our strength and all our weakness with longing and desire to rejoice God's heart with our response, albeit belated, and say «Yes, Lord, you are calling, I am coming; I believe, help my unbelief. You are the Way, be my way: You are the Truth, be my truth: You are Life, fill me with Your life.»