My son and I went to a minor league baseball game a few years back here in Indianapolis, as a special father/son outing before the summer ended. We love baseball. We love to play it in the backyard, and we love to watch it together. Since it was a Friday night, the team provides a special fireworks show after the game, and it is always a really good display.
So we get there, early, in time for batting practice. My son gets a baseball thrown to him by one of the players, and then we move to our seats, food in hand, and settle in for the game. It’s a good game, we have great seats close to the action, the weather is perfect. Professional baseball has 9 innings in a standard game, and as we get into the 8th inning, the game is almost over, and we’ve moved down to the first row to some empty seats, to get even closer. Others have as well.
Then this group of people walk down the aisle, tickets in hand, and want their seats that some other people have been sitting in because, well, it’s the 8th inning, and no one has shown up yet. The people who had been sitting there politely move over, and the new group of people take their seats, the ones they had tickets for. I was thinking to myself, who shows up to their seats in the 8th inning of a baseball game? Clearly, they had spent some time in one of the stadium bars, and they were coming down to their seats for one thing – those post game fireworks.
We all had tickets to the game, and if you buy tickets for a Friday night game, you know you are going to get fireworks at the end. That’s a special perk. And as long as you have a ticket, it doesn’t matter if you show up for batting practice and the whole 9 innings, or you show up in the 8th inning – you are going to get to see the players, and the fireworks!
We are all equal in this aspect. We all get the reward at the end of the game, regardless of when we show up. It’s was what I thought of when I reflected on the Gospel reading for today… The workers who had been laboring all day in the vineyard, get a little upset when those who had been laboring only an hour get paid the same amount. But Jesus explains through the landowner, what does it matter? You agreed to a wage, and the landowner wants to give everyone the same reward, regardless when they showed up to work.
I was a little annoyed at first because my son and I and all the people around us had been there the entire game, and then these people show up late to just see the fireworks. Even though we were not in the seats we had tickets for, we were there early, no one had showed up in the first row, and so we moved down. When the late-comers came, there was a bit of grumbling, just like with the laborers in the vineyard. But then those late-comers had tickets too, we were in their seats, and so we politely slid over. We all had tickets, we all had a right to see the game and the fireworks show, no matter if we were there for first pitch, or just the last inning.
Our faith, and our reward in heaven is the same way, even more so. God wants to give us all He has. He’s constantly calling us all the same, offering us tickets, really good tickets, to His game in life and the reward of an eternal life in Heaven. So often though, we turn those tickets down because we say, “Oh, I’m too busy”, or “I don’t like the game”, or “I just don’t want to go. But I do want to see those fireworks!”
God wants us to see His game in life, how He plays into the little moments of everyday life, the beauty of it, and even though there may be boring moments in the game from time to time, there is so much to see and enjoy! He wants us to see all nine innings. He wants us to labor all day, all of our life and do His Will.
But He also just simply wants us to show up, no matter when that is, and get into the stadium before the game is over, get to our seats, and be there for the fireworks.
God’s calling us to follow Him in life, so we can see the joy that is in all of us, and see Him in all those around us. In the little things. And when we finally choose to do so, and embrace Him and embrace His Grace, whether it’s for an entire life, or on our deathbed, He will give us our amazing reward of an eternal life, the fireworks of a Heaven beyond all imagination.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, when you became Catholic, when you choose to start truly embracing the faith, Holy Scripture, and the Sacraments. Of course, God wants us to show up early and do it our entire lives so that perhaps we can learn to do His will and be His light, be His example to as many people as we can.
But as long as we are there, waiting, yearning for Him, He’ll keep calling us, asking us to enter, until we finally do so and take our seats. And those who were there first will simply slide over, inviting us in. And we’ll be there, to enter into the glory of Heaven with so many other faithful, together.
