Tria Via

Tag: Pray

  • Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time – (Year A)

    Jump to: Lens | Reflection Prompts | Weekly Practice

    First Reading: Isaiah 55:6-9
    Psalm 145: 2-3, 8-9, 17-18
    Second Reading: Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a

    Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16a

    Jesus told his disciples this parable:
    “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner
    who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard.
    After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage,
    he sent them into his vineyard.
    Going out about nine o’clock,
    the landowner saw others standing idle in the marketplace,
    and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard,
    and I will give you what is just.’
    So they went off.
    And he went out again around noon,
    and around three o’clock, and did likewise.
    Going out about five o’clock,
    the landowner found others standing around, and said to them,
    ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’
    They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’
    He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’
    When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman,
    ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay,
    beginning with the last and ending with the first.’
    When those who had started about five o’clock came,
    each received the usual daily wage.
    So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more,
    but each of them also got the usual wage.
    And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying,
    ‘These last ones worked only one hour,
    and you have made them equal to us,
    who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’
    He said to one of them in reply,
    ‘My friend, I am not cheating you.
    Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?
    Take what is yours and go.
    What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?
    Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?
    Are you envious because I am generous?’
    Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

    Anchor Verse

    “Are you envious because I am generous?”
    — Matthew 20:15

    gold colored cross pendant on book
    Photo by George Becker on Pexels.com

    🔎 Lens: Is Your Eye Evil, Because I Am Good?

    A landowner hires workers at dawn, then again at nine, at noon, at three, and at five with only an hour left in the day. At sundown, everyone gets the same wage. The ones who worked since morning are furious. Not because they were shorted. They weren’t. They’re furious because someone else got the same thing for less.

    Saint John Chrysostom, preaching on this exact parable, doesn’t let that reaction slide. He names it plainly: it was proof of envy and jealousy. And he puts the landowner’s response in the sharpest possible terms — a question aimed straight at the complaint: is your eye evil, because I am good? The math was never wrong. The math was never the point. What stung was watching someone else receive the same grace for what looked, by any fair accounting, like less.

    Chrysostom reads the whole parable as a message for two different kinds of people: those who’ve served God from their earliest years, so they don’t grow proud or begrudge the latecomer, and those who come to faith late, in old age or after a hard road, so they can trust it isn’t too late for them. He’s careful to say the workers aren’t meant to represent actual saints in heaven quarreling over rewards; that place, he says, is pure from envy and jealousy. The grumbling in the parable exists to catch something in us before we get there. Isaiah names the same gap directly: my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways. The landowner’s generosity was never going to make sense on a wage-ledger. It only makes sense as love.

    Reflection Prompts

    1. Chrysostom’s question lands hard: “is your eye evil, because I am good?” Where have you resented someone else’s undeserved good fortune, even when it cost you nothing?
    2. If you’re someone who has been “in the vineyard” a long time — a lifelong Catholic, a longtime parishioner — how do you feel about someone arriving at “the eleventh hour” and receiving the same welcome?
    3. If you’re someone who feels like you arrived late, or came back after time away, what would it mean to actually believe this parable is about you?
    4. Isaiah says God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. Where in your life are you currently applying a fairness math that God doesn’t seem to be using?

    Weekly Practice

    At Mass

    During Communion, notice who else is in the line with you — the people you know well and the strangers. The same Bread is given to all. Let that land for a moment.

    After Mass

    This week, notice one moment of comparison — where you measure your effort or your worthiness against someone else’s. Instead of finishing the comparison, just set it down.

    If Tria Via has been meaningful to you: pause after your 8th week or support our work.

  • Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time – (Year A)

    Jump to: Lens | Reflection Prompts | Weekly Practice

    First Reading: Sirach 27:30—28:7
    Psalm 103: 1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12
    Second Reading: Romans 14:7-9

    Gospel: Matthew 18:21-35

    Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
    “Lord, if my brother sins against me,
    how often must I forgive?
    As many as seven times?”
    Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
    That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
    who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
    When he began the accounting,
    a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
    Since he had no way of paying it back,
    his master ordered him to be sold,
    along with his wife, his children, and all his property,
    in payment of the debt.
    At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said,
    ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’
    Moved with compassion the master of that servant
    let him go and forgave him the loan.
    When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants
    who owed him a much smaller amount.
    He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,
    ‘Pay back what you owe.’
    Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
    ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
    But he refused.
    Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison
    until he paid back the debt.
    Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,
    they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master
    and reported the whole affair.
    His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant!
    I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
    Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
    as I had pity on you?’
    Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
    until he should pay back the whole debt.
    So will my heavenly Father do to you,
    unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”

    Anchor Verse

    “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
    — Matthew 18:22

    St. Patrick's Catholic Church Washington
    St. Patrick’s Catholic Church Washington by usdhs is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

    🔎 Lens: The Fly That Keeps Coming Back

    Peter thought he was being generous. Seven times. The rabbis of his day taught three was plenty. Jesus answers with a number that isn’t really a number at all — seventy-seven, or seventy times seven, depending on the translation — which is Scripture’s way of saying: stop counting.

    Then comes the parable, and Pope Francis, preaching on this exact Gospel, zeroed in on the moment the whole story turns. The king forgives an impossible debt, one so large Francis said it would run into the millions today. Then the servant who was just forgiven everything grabs a coworker over a debt worth about a week’s wages and has him thrown in prison. Francis named the two attitudes sitting side by side in that one scene: in the divine attitude justice is pervaded with mercy, whereas the human attitude is limited to justice. The servant wasn’t wrong that he was owed something. He just forgot, immediately, what he himself had just been given.

    Francis was honest, too, about how hard this actually is to live. He described forgiveness not as a single decision but as something continuous, because resentment returns like a bothersome fly in the summer that keeps coming back. That’s a relief to hear from a pope. Forgiving someone isn’t usually one clean moment where the hurt disappears. It’s closer to a fly landing again and again, and choosing, again and again, not to let it stay.

    He also lingered on a line from Sirach that stopped him mid-Mass that morning: remember the end of your life, and cease from enmity. Not as a scare tactic, but as a genuine question. What are we carrying that we’d rather set down before we reach the end?

    Reflection Prompts

    1. Where in your life is resentment behaving like Francis’s “bothersome fly” — something you thought you’d dealt with, that keeps landing again?
    2. The servant forgot what he’d been forgiven the moment someone owed him something smaller. Where might you be doing the same thing?
    3. Francis distinguishes “justice pervaded with mercy” from justice alone. Is there a relationship in your life right now where you’re holding strictly to justice when mercy is being asked of you?
    4. Sirach’s line, “remember the end of your life, and cease from enmity,” stopped a pope mid-Mass. What does it stir in you?

    Weekly Practice

    At Mass

    During the Lord’s Prayer, slow down at “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Let the second half be as real as the first.

    After Mass

    This week, name one person you’re still holding something against. You don’t have to resolve it. Just bring their name to prayer once, honestly, and see what shifts.

    If Tria Via has been meaningful to you: pause after your 8th week or support our work.

  • Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – (Year A)

    Jump to: Lens | Reflection Prompts | Weekly Practice

    First Reading: Ezekiel 33:7-9
    Psalm 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9
    Second Reading: Romans 13:8-10

    Gospel: Matthew 18:15-20

    Jesus said to his disciples:
    “If your brother sins against you,
    go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
    If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.
    If he does not listen,
    take one or two others along with you,
    so that ‘every fact may be established
    on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
    If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.
    If he refuses to listen even to the church,
    then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.
    Amen, I say to you,
    whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,
    and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
    Again, amen, I say to you,
    if two of you agree on earth
    about anything for which they are to pray,
    it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.
    For where two or three are gathered together in my name,
    there am I in the midst of them.”

    Anchor Verse

    “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.”
    — Matthew 18:15

    person hands love woman
    Photo by Artem Podrez on Pexels.com

    🔎 Lens: The Injury Underneath the Offense

    Most of us have a well-worn routine for when someone wrongs us. Talk about it with everyone except them. Let it harden into resentment, or let it go so quietly that it curdles instead of clearing. Jesus offers a third way in this Gospel, and it isn’t really about winning an argument. It’s about what love does when it’s been hurt.

    Pope Benedict XVI, preaching on this exact passage, called fraternal correction something specific: not a reaction to the offense I have suffered but a being moved by love for my brother. That reframes the whole conversation. Go and tell him his fault isn’t permission to finally say what’s been bothering you. It’s a form of care for someone who has, in Benedict’s words, actually hurt himself more than he’s hurt you.

    He quoted Saint Augustine to make the point sharper still: Whoever has offended you, in offending you, has inflicted a serious injury upon himself; and would you not care for a brother’s injury? Augustine’s counsel was to forget the offense received, but not the injury of the brother who caused it. That’s a strange kind of math — setting aside what was done to you in order to attend to what it’s doing to them. It only makes sense if you actually believe the other person’s soul matters more than your own case being heard.

    Benedict noted that Jesus never asks this to happen in isolation. Two or three, then the whole community, each step slower and gentler than shame, each one aimed at keeping someone from being lost rather than at proving them wrong. Ezekiel’s watchman carries the same weight: silence isn’t neutral when someone you love is heading toward harm.

    Reflection Prompts

    1. Augustine says the person who wronged you has, in a sense, wronged themselves more. Does that reframe change how you feel about someone who’s hurt you recently?
    2. Where in your life have you chosen gossip or silence over the harder, more direct conversation this Gospel asks for?
    3. Benedict describes fraternal correction as something that “demands deep humility.” Where would humility need to show up first if you tried this — in how you speak, or in being willing to hear it about yourself?
    4. Ezekiel’s watchman is responsible for speaking up, not for the outcome. Where might you be staying silent out of a fear of the outcome rather than trusting the responsibility is simply to speak with love?

    Weekly Practice

    At Mass

    During the Sign of Peace, notice if there’s anyone you’d rather avoid eye contact with. Offer the peace to them anyway, even just in your heart.

    After Mass

    This week, if there’s a small hurt you’ve been carrying quietly, choose one honest, private, loving conversation instead of letting it either fade into resentment or leak out sideways.

    If Tria Via has been meaningful to you: pause after your 8th week or support our work.