Mercy and Justice

Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Many of you will know Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. An embittered ex-convict, Jean Valjean, is imprisoned for the “piddling” crime of stealing bread for his starving family. After his release he steals again—this time from a bishop—yet is met not with condemnation but with extraordinary forgiveness. In fact, the bishop generously adds to the loot which Jean Valjean had just stolen from him. One immediately sees the vast difference in the way the civil authorities and the Church mete out justice. The bishop’s mercy transforms this man, hardened by the harsh penitentiary system of the state. Jean Valjean spends the rest of his life serving God and neighbour, demonstrating extraordinary mercy where he had been shown the same by the kindly bishop. Arrayed against him is Inspector Javert, the relentless embodiment of rigid justice, who pursues Valjean without rest, unable to conceive that a man once condemned might ever be more than his crime.

The dramatic tension in the tale is clear: mercy versus justice. Bishop Myriel (and later Valjean) personifies a mercy ready to give second chances, to treat persons according to their concrete situations rather than abstract rules. Javert, on the other hand, personifies a justice that is inflexible, harsh, and blind to conversion. Justice, in Javert’s hands, becomes something that looks distinctly less just. One looks to a future of possibilities, what a person can become with repentance and conversion, while the other only looks to the past, incapable of seeing a path out of an irredeemable situation. It is not Jean Valjean who is trapped in his past, the past littered with mistakes, but it is Inspector Javert who is the one who is truly trapped in his inability to forgive and see beyond his prejudices.

Today’s familiar parable of the labourers in the vineyard evokes a similar tension and the same mixed reactions. To those who identify with the latecomers it is pure good news: God’s mercy is so boundless that even those who respond at the eleventh hour are not excluded from the reward of the Kingdom. But I don’t think our Lord was giving permission to those of you who come late for Mass and excusing such behaviour.

Yet the full-day workers feel the sting of injustice. They have borne the heat of the day, put in the greater effort and time, and still receive the same denarius as those who arrived almost at the close of business. From their perspective the landowner—God—appears neither generous nor just, but a capricious taskmaster who fails to honour merit. So, the question arises, as it does in Les Misérables: Is God unjust in seeming to favour the undeserving? Or is this simply mercy at work? How can we speak of a God who is both just and merciful?

The apparent incompatibility dissolves once we clarify what “justice” means. To do justice is to give a person at least what is due. That is precisely what the landowner does. Every worker had agreed to a denarius for the day’s labour. Those hired first received exactly what was promised; they were not short-changed. Justice is satisfied. Mercy, however, goes further: it gives more than is strictly due. The landowner’s generosity to the latecomers does not violate justice; it exceeds it. As St Thomas Aquinas observes, “God acts mercifully, not indeed by going against His justice, but by doing something more than justice; thus a man who pays another two hundred pieces of money, though owing him only one hundred, does nothing against justice, but acts liberally or mercifully… Hence it is clear that mercy does not destroy justice, but in a sense is the fullness thereof” (Summa Theologiae I, q. 21, a. 3). The Apostle James also reminds us that “Mercy exalts itself above judgment” (Jas 2:13).

What most unsettles us is that the parable seems to contradict a hallmark of human justice: impartiality. “Justice is blind,” we say. We cannot play favourites. Our sense of unfairness arises not from any breach of contract between the landowner and the early workers, but from the comparison we ourselves make between the pay and the hours worked. We assume, with the arrogance of our limited perspective, that remuneration must be based on merit, that it should be strictly proportional to effort, and that God must conform to our measures of fairness. We forget that the landowner is free to do what he wills with what is His.

We mortals in our hubris often forget that God is not bound by our human limitations. His justice and His charity coincide. There is no just action that is not also merciful, and no merciful action that is not perfectly just. He is not a detached, blind judge. He is a Father personally invested in each of His children. Love is not blind; love is bound. He gives not merely what we deserve, but what we need. So, the parable should not be interpreted as an indictment of God’s unfairness but rather of us in being envious. We can’t stand it to see others being better off, more successful, experiencing good fortune. The problem is not God’s partiality but rather our jealousy.

As long as we equate fairness with strict equality of outcome, God’s generosity will never make sense. We must move beyond the reflex that interprets another’s gain as our loss. The plain truth is that none of us—early or late, Valjean or Javert—can earn God’s love or salvation by our own efforts. We would be fools to presume that we come anywhere near deserving the generous payment of eternal life offered by the Eternal Landowner. Can we fault Him for lovingly, freely, and mercifully offering the gift of salvation which none of us deserved?

That should be good news rather than an occasion for envy or complaint. The next time we feel God has been unfair or has overlooked us, let us look to the saints who lived the principle that the last shall be first. They were too gratefully occupied in the vineyard to waste energy calculating who received how much for what. They lived for only one purpose: to love and serve God by loving and serving others. Put others ahead of yourself. Rejoice in their good fortune. Give thanks for the abundant generosity and mercy of God, who continues to invite both the Valjeans—and yes, even the Javerts—into His Kingdom, awaiting only our repentance and conversion of heart.