Workers of the Truth 7/7

The question that really concerns us, the question that really oppresses is, is why it is necessary for us in particular to practice the Christian Faith in its totality; why, when there are so many other ways that lead to heaven and salvation, it should be required of us to bear a day after day the whole burden of ecclesial dogmas and of the ecclesial ethos.  And so we come again to the question: What exactly is Christian reality?  What is the specific element in Christianity that not merely justifies it, but makes it compulsorily necessary for us? 

When we raise the question about the foundation and meaning of our Christian existence, there slips in a certain false hankering for the apparently more comfortable life of other people who are  also going to heaven.  We are too much like the laborers of the first hour in the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt 20:1-16).  Once they discovered that they could have earned their day’s pay of one denarius in a much easier way, they could not understand why they had had to labor the whole day.  But what a strange attitude it is to find the duties of our Christian life unrewarding just because the denarius of salvation can be gained without them!  It would seem that we – like the workers of the first hour – want to be paid not only with our own salvation, but more particularly with other’s lack of salvation.  That is at once very human and profoundly un-Christian.