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St. Paul urges the Philippians not to be anxious. He tells them,
“There is no need to worry”. This may seem an unreal piece of advice.
There is no way to avoid all worry. Good and sincere people are naturally
worried about many things. It is part of the burden they carry precisely
because they are people who care, who care abut loved ones, and many
other things.
But Paul is not talking about normal concerns. He is talking about
anxiety. Nothing is more debilitating or fruitless than anxiety. Of itself it
does nothing to solve our problems. Rather, the opposite is the case. By
dissipating our energy, anxiety weakens us and makes it more difficult for
us to find a solution to our problems.
The root of anxiety is lack of trust – lack of trust in oneself, in others,
and especially in God. Hence, the first piece of advice Paul gives the
Philippians is to pray. They must learn to commit their cares to the Lord:
‘If there is anything you need, pray for it.’
He is not suggesting that prayer should take the place of action. Nor
is he implying that their prayers will always be answered. What, then,
does prayer do? Prayer implies a willingness to do what we can, and then
to leave things in the hands of God. To accept what happens then as his
will, even though we may not understand it.
Then Paul tells his readers to think positively. People who are over
anxious tend to think very negatively. They imagine the worst scenario.
This is disastrous. We must concentrate on the good, not on the bad.
Many people devour the newspapers every day. It’s hard to read the
newspapers these days without coming away depressed, so full are they of
bad news. Instead of filling our minds with all kinds of trash, Paul says,
‘Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble,
everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honor,
everything that can be thought virtuous and worthy of praise’. The power
of positive thinking is well known.
However, it is not just a question of thinking nice thoughts. We must
try to do these things. Thoughts alone will not suffice. We must pursue
goodness in our actions. Paul says, ‘Keep doing the things you have
learned from me’.
In Jesus’ parable of the vineyard a lot of ugly things happened. But
evil does not have the last say. In the end good triumphs. This shows us
that there is only one way to overcome evil, and that is with good. Jesus
didn’t answer evil with more evil. He triumphed over evil by good.
If we do what we can, and put our trust in God, then Paul assures us
that ‘the peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand,
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus’.
Peace comes, not from having an easy and tranquil life. We can have
peace even in the midst of struggle and turmoil provided we are on the side
of right. Then the God of peace will be with us.

It’s been a long day. She sits in her dimly lit living room. It’s after
11pm; her day started before six. At the office, it was one crisis after
another; then the school called: her eight-year-old she is raising alone
came down with a fever, so she had to go and bring him home and
arrange for her mother to come over so she could get back to the office.
After getting him to bed, she took on the monthly challenge of making
her salary cover all the bills (managed to make it again for another
month)! She’s tired but can’t sleep just yet. She needs a few minutes
just to be thankful for the beautiful boy snoring up a storm in the next
room who makes her life as a mom more than worth it all.
He drives a truck for a package delivery service – and these are busy
days. He takes a couple of extra shifts when he can because his family
could use the money – the oldest is starting to look at colleges. But one
night a week he manages to get home in time to gulp down some supper
and head to the community center where he coaches a team of nine and
ten-year-olds in the city’s youth basketball league. He first started
coaching his son’s team – and kept at it long after his son moved on.
Yeah, there are other things he could be doing that, frankly, would make
life a lot easier, but he knows that for some of these kids, this team is the
best thing in their lives. So, one night a week he continues to run, push
and coach these kids for the good of his own soul.
He helps her with her coat and makes sure she has a good, steady grip
on her cane. He then puts her arm in his and they walk the same path
they walk every afternoon in the park across the street from their
apartment. He points to a cardinal lying on a tree branch overhead. He
cheers a great catch made by a player in a pick-up football game. He
talks about last night’s call from their son and the latest doings of the
grandchildren. But none of it registers with her. She is lost in a fog of
dementia. All she recognizes is him, her husband of 63 years. And
that’s more than enough. He’s thankful that they can walk arm-in-arm
together for another day.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus upholds the sacred dignity of all men
and women in the eyes of God: the struggling, the poor, the powerless,
the ignored, the forgotten, the vulnerable, those pushed to the margins
and peripheries of society. Every life is open to the “way of
righteousness”: simple humility, faithfulness and gratitude are the entries
to the Kingdom of God. Our standing in demographic and marketing
profiles, our net worth, whatever labels society applies to us do not
determine the “holiness” of our lives or the measure of God’s love in our
days. Christ invites us to realize the Kingdom of God in our lives by our
commitment to the selfless generosity and faithful gratitude; God calls
us to look beyond the designations and stereotypes like “tax collector”
and “prostitute” and recognize, instead, the holiness that resides within
the soul of every person – including ourselves.

Life is not easy right now – for some of us, things could not get any
worse. Our frustrations and impatience get the better of us. We avoid
confrontation for the most part, but we quietly seethe at being
disrespected or dismissed or overlooked.
Gratitude is a much more difficult attitude to embrace – it demands a
total recalibration of how we look at our life and world.
In his book, “The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the
Twenty-Third Psalm, Harold S. Kushner reflects on the importance and
blessings of gratitude:
“I read of a person who had formed the habit of writing Thank you on
the lower left corner of every check he wrote. When he paid his electric
bill or his phone bill, he would write Thank you to express his gratitude
to the companies that made those services available to him at the press
of a button. Even when he paid his taxes, he would write Thank you on
the check as a way of reminding himself (he didn’t think the Internal
Revenue Service would notice it) that his taxes were the price he
willingly paid for living in the United States with all of its benefits…..”
“Each night as I prepare for bed, I put drops in my eyes to fend off the
threat of glaucoma that would rob me of my sight and take from me the
pleasure of reading. Each morning at breakfast, I take a pill to control
my blood pressure, and each evening at dinner I take another to lower
my cholesterol level. But instead of lamenting the ailments that come
with growing older, instead of wishing I were as young and fit as I once
was, I take my medicine with a prayer of thanks that modern science has
found ways to help me cope with these ailments. I think of all my
ancestors who didn’t live long enough to develop the complications of
old age, and did not have pills to take when they did”.
The kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims is centered in a spirit of
gratitude for what we have received and the humility to seek to share
those blessings with others – and in that spirit of gratitude, we discover
the happiness that is centered in the Spirit of God. The workers in
today’s Gospel feel cheated by the vineyard owner’s generosity – their
resentment at their coworkers’ good fortune diminishes them and clouds
any satisfaction in being able to provide for their families. Jesus calls us
to a change in perspective: to look beyond what we do not have and
realize and rejoice in all that we have been given, including the love of
family and friends, good health, opportunities to learn and grow, the
freedom and resources to live lives of fulfillment and meaning.