My Ways Are Not Your Ways: Is 55, Philippians 1, and the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard in Mt 20

By Prof. Dr. Daniel C. Afonso · Updated 20 October 2026

Non sunt cogitationes meae cogitationes vestrae.
Is 55:8

“My ways are not your ways”: the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time of Year A brings together three texts around the logic of God that overturns human logic. Is 55:6-9 proclaims that God’s thoughts are not the thoughts of men and that His ways are as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth. Phil 1:20c-24, 27a presents Paul in an existential paradox: to live is Christ and to die is gain, and so he does not know which to prefer.

Mt 20:1-16a tells the parable of the laborers in the vineyard: the owner pays the same to those who worked all day and to those who worked one hour, because his goodness does not follow the logic of the market. The three texts converge: God’s grammar is that of gratuitousness, which does not count hours worked or deserved paths, and which unsettles those who have learned to calculate what is owed to them.

I. The First Reading: Is 55:6-9

The prophet begins with an urgent imperative: “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near” (Is 55:6). Time is not infinite: there are moments of openness that pass. And the call to conversion: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the evil man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy” (v. 7). Then comes the foundation of the possible conversion: God’s thoughts are not ours, His ways are not ours.

“As the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (v. 9). The distance is not insurmountable: it is the foundation of hope. Human thoughts calculate what is deserved. God’s thoughts calculate what is needed. Human ways distribute according to merit. God’s ways distribute according to love. That is why one who seems far away can find the Lord: distance is no barrier for God.

II. The Second Reading: Phil 1:20c-24, 27a

Paul writes from prison with a disconcerting serenity: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21). To live is Christ: his whole existence is oriented toward Christ and through Christ. To die is gain: death is not loss but profit, because it brings him definitively close to Christ. Hence the paradox: “I am hard pressed between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you” (vv. 23-24).

Paul does not choose what he prefers: he chooses what is most useful to the community. And the final appeal: “Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ” (v. 27a). Whoever lives in this way, for whom to live is Christ, inverts the logic of the parable of the laborers: he does not calculate what is owed to him, but what he can give.

III. The Gospel: Mt 20:1-16a

Jesus tells the parable of the owner of the vineyard who hires laborers at the first hour (early in the morning), at the third hour, at the sixth hour, at the ninth hour, and at the eleventh hour (one hour before the end of the day). At the end, he pays them all the same thing: one denarius. Those who were hired first grumble: “These last worked only one hour, and you have treated them the same as us, who bore the burden of the day and the heat” (Mt 20:12).

The owner answers the first: “Friend, I am doing you no injustice. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go. I want to give this last one the same as I gave you. Do I not have the right to do as I wish with what is mine? Or are you envious because I am good?” (vv. 13-15).

The parable does not describe an injustice: the owner kept the agreement with the first. It describes a goodness that exceeds the agreement: the last receive more than would be owed to them. And the conclusion: “Thus the last will be first, and the first will be last” (v. 16a). The order of merit is not the order of love.

IV. Mary and the First Hour

The parable of the laborers raises an unexpected question about Mary: if the last receive the same as the first, what does it mean that Mary was called “at the first hour,” before everyone? The answer lies not in the logic of merit but in the logic of mission.

Mary was not called first in order to receive more: she was called first because the mission required it. The Son of God needed a mother before He needed apostles. The fullness of grace that Mary received (“full of grace,” Lk 1:28) is not a reward for accumulated work: it is the endowment necessary for the mission that no one else would receive.

Is 55 says: “Seek the Lord while he may be found.” Mary never needed to seek: she found before she knew she was seeking, because the Lord came to her at the Annunciation. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts (Is 55:8): no human logic would have chosen an unknown young woman from Nazareth to be the Mother of the Savior. But God’s ways are different, and Mary is the most eloquent sign of that otherness.

To read the readings: Isaiah 55, Philippians 1, and Matthew 20, in the Ave-Maria Bible.