HAVE you ever wished that a delightful experience that you had recently should have happened earlier in your life? Well, I had this experience a few days ago.
I was planning to attend the funeral of a former classmate in another city with a colleague when a well-known Church leader decided to join us. As we drove to the Funeral Mass, we had the rare opportunity to talk to one another and to share experiences of ministry. Then, after the funeral, we decided to have drinks and dinner together and to chat more. What supposed to be a mere attendance at a funeral became a full day of wonderful and profound experiences of fraternity. “That should have happened a long time ago,” I told myself.
But despite this small regret, I realized that what I just encountered was a rare gift from God. It didn’t matter that this experience happened late in my life. What was important was that it happened and it was an amazing and transformative encounter!
God’s gifts, although they come earlier or later in life, have similar worth. Perhaps, they come later in life for certain reasons.
God’s gift to me of being assigned in the seminary to help prepare future priests came later in my life, that is, after twenty-three years of parish ministry. Why didn’t God put me in this work earlier in my life as a priest? Well, I could think of one reason now. He wanted me to work in the seminary after having long years of pastoral ministry and after attaining a doctoral degree in order to share effectively my knowledge, experiences, and wisdom with seminarians. And there might be other reasons that I still have to discover.
God’s ways are not our ways. This is what we learned from the Scripture Readings of this Sunday’s Mass. The Book of the Prophet Isaiah says: “For my thought are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thought above your thoughts.”
There are many times that we question God for some of our experiences in life: Why didn’t we have this experience before? Why did he take way someone so significant in our life? Why is he not answering our earnest prayer? God has reasons and we’ll most likely discover these reasons later on in life.
In the Gospel this Sunday, we discover similar instances of people questioning God on his plans or wishes. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. Some laborers started to work at dawn, others at nine o’clock in the morning, another group at noon, and still others at three o’clock. At five o’clock he found another group of men standing idle. Then, he asked them to go to the vineyard to work too. When evening came, he called everyone who worked and paid them all with the same amount of wage. Of course, those who worked for a longer time complained to the landowner on what seemed to be an unjust treatment. The landowner told them that they have no reasons to complain because he could do whatever he wished with his money.
Indeed, God’s graces come in different times to different people. We have no reason to complain. All that we could do is to thank him for these graces and to appreciate his reasons for sending them to us earlier or later in life.
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Reverend Rodel G. Balagtas attended St. Johns Seminary in Camarillo, Calif. and earned his Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri. For 20 years, he has been in the parish ministry of large multi-cultural communities. From 2002 to 2014, he has been the pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Los Angeles. He will begin teaching at St. John’s Seminary this July. Please email Fr. Rodel at [email protected].
