Today we are given a very important parable to consider.  A landowner hires people to work throughout the day and agrees with them for the standard, fair wage for their work.  Right at the end of the work day, he recruits a few others to finish up some final chores, and out of his generosity, he agrees to pay them what they would have earned if they had worked the whole day.  The others, those who had toiled throughout the entire workday, resent this generosity.  Now, they haven’t been treated unfairly.  The steward pays them exactly what they agreed upon, exactly what they are due in justice for such a day’s work.  These men who worked the whole day, had not been cheated.  But they resent the landowner’s generosity. 

This is a very important parable for us, because it reminds us how insidious and destructive the vice of envy can be in our lives.  Envy is not the most glamorous of sins; it’s not immediately obvious to us necessarily when we fall into it.  It’s not immediately public; it’s not so dramatic at first; but it is powerful, and it destroys relationships.  We see something good in another person, something we don’t have.  We begin by admiring that quality or that gift: and that’s OK; that’s good in fact.  We should respect and try to imitate the good things we see in others: that’s one of the reasons the saints are important in our lives.  But the problem comes when we see something good in another person: professional success, a great family, deep friendships, gifts, talents, skills, anything: we see these things, and we’re insecure, and we resent the other person for those things.  Why is she better friends with so-and-so than she is with me?  Why did he get promoted, when I’ve worked so much harder?  Why did they invite those people over instead of us?  These kinds of thoughts can gnaw at us, can have a real grip on our minds.  And they can really affect how we view others, how we speak of others, and how we treat others.  Soon that insecurity, that resentment, can drive every choice that we make. 

So what do we do?  How do we fight this tendency of our fallen human nature?  How do we inoculate ourselves against the powerful sin of envy?  How do we see the good of others and not become sad, as if their goodness is some kind of an attack against us.  How do we avoid becoming resentful when we see others who are more gifted than ourselves, or even worse, when we see others who succeed more without being remarkably gifted.  What’s the opposite of envy?  What’s the remedy for envy?  Gratitude.  It’s a deeply Christ-like virtue, and so we look to Our Lord.  We get angry for not getting what we think we deserve as a matter of justice.  But no one in history was treated more unjustly than Our Lord.  Even his closest friends abandoned him.  He was absolutely innocent, but went willingly to the cross.  No one ever had more legitimate cause to be resentful of how he was misunderstood and mistreated by the world.  But instead, Our Lord performed the greatest act of gratitude and thanksgiving and self-sacrifice that the world could ever know.  And he gives us an example of how to break free from the grip of envy in our own lives.  And so our tools to overcome and avoid envy are these: To make a deliberate choice, every day, to see the good in others, to focus on the good in others, even in those, especially in those who have hurt us.  To pray every day to God: God, give me a spirit of gratitude.  To speak only good things about others, and when we have nothing good to say, to remain silent.  To ask for a spirit of gratitude as we receive the Eucharist, which is the food of gratitude.  To think about and focus on those blessings we have in our lives.  And finally, here’s the hard one, to try to be thankful even for the crosses that we are asked to bear, to say to God, “Thank you for loving me in this way, by inviting me to share in your cross.”  Our goal is to be perfectly free in our relationships with other people.  Not to be threatened by them, not to judge them, not to seek something from them: not to be enslaved by my expectations of what people should do for me.  Our hope is to seek to come to know people, really know them, to relate to them, to seek to understand them.  To love them for who they are.  To help them in their struggles.  And to rejoice with them in their joys and in their successes.  And finally to trust that the Lord has given us the grace we need to do the work he wants us to do in this world.  This should be the basis of our optimism.  God has thought of each of us, loved us as unique individuals from all eternity.  He has good work for all of us to do, to build up his kingdom on earth and to prepare for his eternal kingdom in heaven.  Lord, give us gratitude.  Lord, give us peace.