• 

• 
  I was recently watching the U.S. Open Tennis Finals in which Dominic Thiem survived a nail biting match that went to a tiebreak in the final fifth set against Alexander “Sasha” Zvevrev.  Zverev had been up the first two sets and only needed one more to win when the momentum shifted, and the title slipped away from his grasp. In the post game interview, Alexander could not hold back tears being so close to his first Grand Slam victory. I thought how cruel it is when two players who are so evenly matched and work so hard are reduced to there having to be only one winner. Even Thiem said he wished he could have shared the title. It reminded me of the negative side of competition – that we are programmed that the winner gets an exorbitant amount of the glory. The runner-up should feel no shame in knowing he was were second best, since being second best in the world should make one feel proud.
   
  We have been programmed to compete with one another, whether we are conscious of it or not.  We know what our hourly wage is, and if we knew someone who had the same wage worked fewer hours than us but received the same pay, we would be outraged. There’s nothing “fair” about today’s Gospel in which those late-arriving workers who toiled a fraction of what the early arrivals did received the same compensation. The workers who arrived early went from feeling like being winners – thinking they’d receive the larger paychecks – to losers, having worked more hours for less pay than those who arrived later than them.
   
  Jesus is trying to get us out of a competitive, winner-takes-all mentality. God loves all of his children and at times is even lavish in his care for us. As the parable states, those who arrived early had agreed to what they would earn, so why should they be upset when generosity was shown to the others? The parable itself reveals that when asked why they had not sought work earlier, the latecomers said no one was hiring, indicating they had the intention of working and were not lazy.
   
  So maybe Willie Nelson had it right all along:  let’s adopt a Luckenbauch, Texas state of mind that affirms the side in us that is tired of comparing ourselves with and competing against one another and seeks a simpler life that stresses gratitude and sees the glass half full, even if we aren’t the top dog!                        
                                                                                                                                       -Fr. Dennis