About five o’clock [the landowner] went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ (Mt 20)
As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20:21)
Whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (Jas 5:20)
At the end of the last lesson, we asked how God might use us as instruments to save those who are outside the reach of our efforts of evangelization. This question puts us in touch with the deep mystery of God’s “economy of salvation.” Let’s reflect on this mystery before we get into answering the question proper.
To do this, let’s recall a point from the earlier section, on the “Means of Salvation”:
Most fundamentally — We are saved by the will of God. We have access to the means of salvation … because God has freely chosen to give us this gift. … In the mysterious plan and providence of God, we’ve been chosen to be Catholic Christians…
Exactly! God has chosen us to be Catholics not because of anything good we have done, but by his free, unearned grace.
But the flip-side of acknowledging that Christians are chosen to be such by God’s free and undeserved grace is to acknowledge that some have not been so chosen — at least, not yet. … For we know that God, as the Scriptures say, “desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”[1] We know, then, that this free grace must be offered to all, at least at some point in the life of each person.
Chosen Late in the Day
We see this in the Lord’s parable of the workers in the vineyard:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’”[2]
As the parable continues, those hired early and those hired late receive the same daily wage, and those who worked longer complain about this.
The parable is meant to reveal God’s generosity in the dispensation of grace and salvation, and how “the last will be first, and the first last.” God called the Jews first, and He called the Gentiles later. Likewise, God calls some people into communion with Himself early in their lives, and some He calls later in their lives.[3] The difference between the two groups is not that one accepts grace and the other sinfully rejects it. The Lord makes that clear in the parable. When the landowner meets people sitting idle near the end of the workday, and asks them why, they answer, “Because no one has hired us.” … In other words, they simply had not yet been called![4]
As we said in the last lesson, some apparently do not ever hear the Gospel preached adequately. The external means of salvation are never offered to them. In this sense, they “have not yet been called.” But as we talked about in the last lesson, many of them may have an internal gift of grace, by which they are “already on the way of salvation,” and possess “elements of truth and goodness” to serve as “preparation for the Gospel.”
Could it be that such people live with a certain purity of heart, seeking after God, awaiting Him, until He should decide in His mercy to make Himself known in some way? Perhaps God will call them in the depths of their hearts to enter His “vineyard” at the “last hour of the workday”![5] Given the parable, and the teachings of the Church on salvation, which we have outlined, it seems probable.
But why might God call some “early” and some “late”?
Let’s think about this a bit. At any given time, God has many people that He has granted the grace to believe and to serve Him. But God does not just call them for their own sake, but for the sake of others. He calls us, who are Christians, to serve; not to be served. He wants us to follow Christ; to be instruments of redemption for others.
In other words, God calls some now … so that later, He might call others through them.[6]
“As the Father Sent Me, So I Send You”
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon all the disciples of Jesus gathered in the upper room, so they might proclaim “the mighty works of God” and live lives of Divine Love. Likewise, the Lord Jesus told His Apostles, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” Then He breathed the Holy Spirit upon them.[7]
It’s really a beautiful plan: God the Father sent Jesus into the world to save all people. The number of the saved, however, is fulfilled over time as Jesus saves and sends some, and makes them His instruments for the salvation of yet others. In every generation, He continues this saving work. Some unbelievers reject the call to salvation, and we don’t know how many have or will do so. Nevertheless, the call of God’s grace is free and unearned, given to everyone in the ways and at the times of God’s choosing.
In the first few lessons, we asked why the Church is necessary for salvation and how Christians are saved through her. Then we asked, in this and the last lesson, “What is the role of the Church in the salvation of those who are not (or not yet) Christian?” We have now answered that God chooses Christians — sons and daughters of the Church — to be His instruments for the salvation of non-Christians. He chooses some early, so that through them, He might choose others later.
In the next lesson, we will consider what this looks like in practice. How it is that through Christians, God draws the world into communion with Himself in His Church? We’ll continue to focus on the mysterious case of those called “late” — even at the end of the workday, at “the eleventh hour.”
[1] See 1 Timothy 2:3-6: “God our Savior … desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all.” See also 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient on your account, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”
[2] Matthew 20:1-7.
[3] This is a common interpretation among the Fathers of the Church. For example, see St. Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies 19.
[4] The Lord seems to be referring to this same reality when he says, “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me … I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (Jn 10:14, 16). And “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (Jn 17:20-21). In other words, there are people in the world who are not yet united to Jesus Christ in the Church, but who someday will be. Jesus sees them and knows their hearts (like He sees the hearts of everyone and knows everyone), and He knows that when He calls them to Himself, to share in His divine life, that they will come hear His voice and follow Him, and enter into the communion of the redeemed.
[5] Or is that person already “working in the vineyard” from the moment he begins, by grace, on the path of a sincere seeker of the Lord being prepared for the Gospel? It is not clear.
[6] It seems that God wants it this way. For if God called everyone at the same time, there may have been less chance for people to image Him as Savior; and we’d have more reason to judge others who have not turned to Him — for we’d know for certain that they were called but rejected the call.
[7] Acts 2:11; John 20:21-23.